Терри Гудкайнд. Восьмое правило волшебника, или Обнаженная Империя(engl)
You knew they were there, didn't you?" Kahlan asked in a hushed tone as
she leaned closer.
Against the darkening sky, she could just make out the shapes of three
black-tipped races taking to wing, beginning their nightly hunt. That was
why he'd stopped. That was what he'd been watching as the rest of them
waited in uneasy silence.
"Yes," Richard said. He gestured over his shoulder without turning to
look. "There are two more, back there."
Kahlan briefly scanned the dark jumble of rock, but she didn't see any
others.
Lightly grasping the silver pommel with two fingers, Richard lifted his
sword a few inches, checking that it was clear in its scabbard. A last
fleeting glimmer of amber light played across his golden cape as he let the
sword drop back in place. In the gathering gloom of dusk, his familiar tall,
powerful contour seemed as if it were no more than an apparition made of
shadows.
Just then, two more of the huge birds shot by right overhead. One,
wings stretched wide, let out a piercing scream as it banked into a tight
gliding turn, circling once in assessment of the five people below before
stroking its powerful wings to catch its departing comrades in their swift
journey west.
This night they would find ample food.
Kahlan expected that as Richard watched them he was thinking of the
half brother that until just recently he hadn't known existed. That brother
now lay a hard day's travel to the west in a place so naked to the burning
sun that few people ever ventured there. Fewer still ever returned. The
searing heat, though, had not been the worst of it.
Beyond those desolate lowlands, the dying light silhouetted a remote
rim of mountains, making them look as if they had been charred black by the
furnace of the underworld itself. As dark as those mountains, as implacable,
as perilous, the flight of five pursued the departing light.
Jennsen, standing to the far side of Richard, watched in astonishment.
"What in the world ... ?"
"Black-tipped races," Richard said.
Jennsen mulled over the unfamiliar name. "I've often watched hawks and
falcons and such," she said at last, "but I've never seen any birds of prey
that hunt at night, other than owls---and these aren't owls."
As Richard watched the races, he idly gathered small pebbles from the
crumbling jut of rock beside him, rattling them in a loose fist. "I'd never
seen them before, either, until I came down here. People we've spoken with
say they began appearing only in the last year or two, depending on who's
telling the story. Everyone agrees, though, that they never saw the races
before then."
"Last couple of years ..." Jennsen wondered aloud.
Almost against her will, Kahlan found herself recalling the stories
they'd heard, the rumors, the whispered assertions.
Richard cast the pebbles back down the hardpan trail. "I believe
they're related to falcons."
Jennsen finally crouched to comfort her brown goat, Betty, pressing up
against her skirts. "They can't be falcons." Betty's little white twins,
usually either capering, suckling, or sleeping, now huddled mute beneath
their mother's round belly. "They're too big to be falcons-- they're bigger
than hawks, bigger than golden eagles. No falcon is that big."
Richard finally withdrew his glare from the birds and bent to help
console the trembling twins. One, eager for reassurance, anxiously peered up
at him, licking out its little pink tongue before deciding to rest a tiny
black hoof in his palm. With a thumb, Richard stroked the kids spindly
white-haired leg.
A smile softened his features as well as his voice. "Are you saying you
choose not to see what you've just seen, then?"
Jennsen smoothed Betty's drooping ears. "I guess the hair standing on
end at the back of my neck must believe what I saw."
Richard rested his forearm across his knee as he glanced toward the
grim horizon. "The races have sleek bodies with round heads and long pointed
wings similar to all the falcons I've seen. Their tails often fan out when
they soar but otherwise are narrow in flight."
Jennsen nodded, seeming to recognize his description of relevant
attributes. To Kahlan, a bird was a bird. These, though, with red streaks on
their chests and crimson at the base of their flight feathers, she had come
to recognize.
They're fast, powerful, and aggressive," Richard added. "I saw one
easily chase down a prairie falcon and snatch it out of midair in its
taons."
Jennsen looked to be struck speechless by such an account. Richard had
grown up in the vast forests of Westland and had gone on to be a woods
guide. He knew a great deal about the outdoors and about animals. Such an
upbringing seemed exotic to Kahlan, who had grown up in a palace in the
Midlands. She loved learning about nature from Richard, loved sharing his
excitement over the wonders of the world, of life. Of course, he had long
since come to be more than a woods guide. It seemed a lifetime ago when
she'd first met him in those woods of his, but in fact it had only been
little more than two and a half years.
Now they were a long way from Richard's simple boyhood home or Kahlan's
grand childhood haunts. Had they a choice, they would choose to be in either
place, or just about anywhere else, other than where they were. But at least
they were together.
After all she and Richard had been through--the dangers, the
anguish,the heartache of losing friends and loved ones--Kahlan jealously
savored every moment with him, even if it was in the heart of enemy
territory.
In addition to only just finding out that he had a half brother, they
had also learned that Richard had a half sister: Jennsen. From what they had
gathered since they'd met her the day before, she, too, had grown up in the
woods. It was heartwarming to see her simple and sincere joy at having
discovered a close relation with whom she had much in common. Only her
fascination with her new big brother exceeded Jennsen's wide-eyed curiosity
about Kahlan and her mysterious upbringing in the Confessors' Palace in the
far-off city of Aydindril.
Jennsen had had a different mother than Richard, but the same brutal
tyrant, Darken Rahl, had fathered them both. Jennsen was younger, just past
twenty, with sky blue eyes and ringlets of red hair down onto her shoulders.
She had inherited some of Darken Rahl's cruelly perfect features, but her
maternal heritage and guileless nature altered them into bewitching
femininity. While Richard's raptor gaze attested to his Rahl paternity, his
countenance, and his bearing, so manifest in his gray eyes, were uniquely
his own.
"I've seen falcons rip apart small animals," Jennsen said. "I don't
believe I much like thinking about a falcon that big, much less five of them
together."
Her goat, Betty, looked to share the sentiment.
"We take turns standing watch at night," Kahlan said, answering
Jennsen's unspoken fear. While that was hardly the only reason, it was
enough.
In the eerie silence, withering waves of heat rose from the lifeless
rock all around. It had been an arduous day's journey out from the center of
the valley wasteland and across the surrounding flat plain, but none of them
complained about the brutal pace. The torturous heat, though, had left
Kahlan with a pounding headache. While she was dead tired, she knew that in
recent days Richard had gotten far less sleep than any of the rest of them.
She could read that exhaustion in his eyes, if not in his stride.
Kahlan realized, then, what it was that had her nerves so on edge: it
was the silence. There were no yips of coyotes, no howls of distant wolves,
no flutter of bats, no rustle of a raccoon, no soft scramble of a vole--not
even the buzz and chirp of insects. In the past, when all those things went
silent it had meant potential danger. Here, it was dead silent because
nothing lived in this place, no coyotes or wolves or bats or mice or even
bugs. Few living things ever trespassed this barren land. Here, the night
was as soundless as the stars.
Despite the heat, the oppressive silence ran a chill shiver up through
Kahlan's shoulders.
She peered off once more at the races barely still visible against the
violet blush of the western sky. They, too, would not stay long in this
wasteland where they did not belong.
"Kind of unnerving to encounter such a menacing creature when you never
even knew such a thing existed," Jennsen said. She used her sleeve to wipe
sweat from her brow as she changed the subject. "I've heard it said that a
bird of prey wheeling over you at the beginning of a journey is a warning."
Cara, until then content to remain silent, leaned in past Kahlan. "Just
let me get close enough and I'll pluck their wretched feathers." Long blond
hair, pulled back into the traditional single braid of her profession,
framed Cara's heated expression. "We'll see how much of an omen they are,
then."
Cara's glare turned as dark as the races whenever she saw the huge
birds. Being swathed from head to foot in a protective layer of gauzy black
cloth, as were all of them except Richard, only added to her intimidating
presence. When Richard had unexpectedly inherited rule, he had been further
surprised to discover that Cara and her sister Mord-Sith were part of the
legacy.
Richard returned the little white kid to its watchful mother and stood,
hooking his thumbs behind his multilayered leather belt. At each wrist,
wide, leather-padded silver bands bearing linked rings and strange symbols
seemed to gather and reflect what little light remained. "I once had a hawk
circle over me at the beginning of a journey."
"And what happened?" Jennsen asked, earnestly, as if his pronouncement
might settle once and for all the old superstition.
Richard's smile widened into a grin. "I ended up marrying Kahlan."
Cara folded her arms. "That only proves it was a warning for the Mother
Confessor, not you, Lord Rahl."
Richard's arm gently encircled Kahlan's waist. She smiled with him as
she leaned against his embrace in answer to the wordless gesture. That that
journey had eventually brought them to be husband and wife seemed more
astonishing than anything she would ever have dared dream. Women like
her--Confessors--dared not dream of love. Because of Richard, she had dared
and had gained it.
Kahlan shuddered to think of the terrible times she had feared he was
dead, or worse. There had been so many times she had ached to be with him,
to simply feel his warm touch, or to even be granted the mercy of knowing he
was safe.
Jennsen glanced at Richard and Kahlan to see that neither took Cara's
admonition as anything but fond heckling. Kahlan supposed that to a
stranger, especially one from the land of D'Hara, as was Jennsen, Cara's
gibes at Richard would defy reason; guards did not bait their masters,
especially when their master was the Lord Rahl, the master of D'Hara.
Protecting the Lord Rahl with their lives had always been the blind
duty of the Mord-Sith. In a perverse way, Cara's irreverence toward Richard
was a celebration of her freedom, paid in homage to the one who had granted
it.
By free choice, the Mord-Sith had decided to be Richard's closest
protectors. They had given Richard no say in the matter. They often paid
little heed to his orders unless they deemed them important enough; they
were, after all, now free to pursue what was important to them, and what the
Mord-Sith considered important above all else was keeping Richard safe.
Over time, Cara, their ever-present bodyguard, had gradually become
like family. Now that family had unexpectedly grown.
Jennsen, for her part, was awestruck to find herself welcomed. From
what they had so far learned, Jennsen had grown up in hiding, always fearful
that the former Lord Rahl, her father, would finally find her and murder her
as he murdered any other ungifted offspring he found.
Richard signaled to Tom and Friedrich, back with the wagon and horses,
that they would stop for the night. Tom lifted an arm in acknowledgment and
then set to unhitching his team.
No longer able to see the races in the dark void of the western sky,
Jennsen turned back to Richard. "I take it their feathers are tipped in
black."
Before Richard had a chance to answer, Cara spoke in a silken voice
that was pure menace. "They look like death itself drips from the tips of
their feathers--like the Keeper of the underworld has been using their
wicked quills to write death warrants."
Cara loathed seeing those birds anywhere near Richard or Kahlan. Kahlan
shared the sentiment.
Jennsen's gaze fled Cara's heated expression. She redirected her
suspicion to Richard.
"Are they causing you ... some kind of trouble?"
Kahlan pressed a fist to her abdomen, against the ache of dread stirred
by the question.
Richard appraised Jennsen's troubled eyes. "The races are tracking us."
Jennsen frowned. "What?"
Richard gestured between Kahlan and himself. "The races, they're
tracking us."
"You mean they followed you out into this wasteland and they're
watching you, waiting to see if you'll die of thirst or something so they
can pick your bones clean."
Richard slowly shook his head. "No, I mean they're following us,
keeping track of where we are."
"I don't understand how you can possibly know--"
"We know," Cara snapped. Her shapely form was as spare, as sleek, as
aggressive-looking as the races themselves and, swathed in the black garb of
the nomadic people who sometimes traveled the outer fringes of the vast
desert, just as sinister-looking.
With the back of his hand against her shoulder, Richard gently eased
Cara back as he went on. "We were looking into it when Friedrich found us
and told us about you."
Jennsen glanced over at the two men back with the wagon. The sharp
sliver of moon floating above the black drape of distant mountains provided
just enough light for Kahlan to see that Tom was working at removing the
trace chains from his big draft horses while Friedrich unsaddled the others.
Jennsen's gaze returned to search Richard's eyes. "What have you been
able to find out, so far?"
"We never had a chance to really find out much of anything. Oba, our
surprise half brother lying dead back there, kind of diverted our attention
when he tried to kill us." Richard unhooked a waterskin from his belt. "But
the races are still watching us."
He handed Kahlan his waterskin, since she had left hers hanging on her
saddle. It had been hours since they had last stopped. She was tired from
riding and weary from walking when they had needed to rest the horses.
Kahlan lifted the waterskin to her lips only to be reacquainted with
how bad hot water tasted. At least they had water. Without water, death came
quickly in the unrelenting heat of the seemingly endless, barren expanse
around the forsaken place called the Pillars of Creation.
Jennsen slipped the strap of her waterskin off her shoulder before
hesitantly starting again. "I know it's easy to misconstrue things. Look at
how I was tricked into thinking you wanted to kill me just like Darken Rahl
had. I really believed it, and there were so many things that seemed to me
to prove it, but I had it all wrong. I guess I was just so afraid it was
true, I believed it."
Richard and Kahlan both knew it hadn't been Jennsen's doing--she had
merely been a means for others to get at Richard--but it had squandered
precious time.
Jennsen took a long drink. Still grimacing at the taste of the water,
she lifted the waterskin toward the empty desert behind them. "I mean, there
isn't much alive out here--it might actually be that the races are hungry
and are simply waiting to see if you die out here and, because they do keep
watching and waiting, you've begun to think it's more." she gave Richard a
demure glance, bolstered by a smile, as if hoping to-cloak the admonishment
as a suggestion. "Maybe that's all it really is."
"They aren't waiting to see if we die out here," Kahlan said, wanting
to end the discussion so they could eat and Richard could get some sleep.
"They were watching us before we had to come here. They've been watching us
since we were back in the forests to the northeast. Vow, let's have some
supper and--"
"But why? That's not the way birds behave. Why would they do that?"
"I think they're keeping track of us for someone," Richard said. "More
precisely, I think someone is using them to hunt us."
Kahlan had known various people in the Midlands, from simple people
living in the wilds to nobles living in great cities, who hunted with
falcons. This, though, was different. Even if she didn't fully understand
Richard's meaning, much less the reasons for his conviction, she knew he
hadn't meant it in the traditional sense.
With abrupt realization, Jennsen paused in the middle of another drink.
"That's why you've started scattering pebbles along the windblown places in
the trail."
Richard smiled in confirmation. He took his waterskin when Kahlan
handed it back. Cara frowned up at him as he took a long drink.
"You've been throwing pebbles along the trail? Why?"
Jennsen eagerly answered in his place. "The open rock gets blown clean
by the wind. He's been making sure that if anyone tries to sneak up on us in
the dark, the pebbles strewn across those open patches will crunch underfoot
and alert us."
Cara wrinkled a questioning brow at Richard. "Really?"
He shrugged as he passed her his waterskin so that she wouldn't have to
dig hers out from beneath her desert garb. "Just a little extra precaution
in case anyone is close, and careless. Sometimes people don't expect the
simple things and that catches them up."
"But not you," Jennsen said, hooking the strap of her waterskin back
over her shoulder. "You think of even the simple things."
Richard chuckled softly. "If you think I don't make mistakes, Jennsen,
you're wrong. While it's dangerous to assume that those who wish you harm
are stupid, it can't hurt to spread out a little gravel just in case someone
thinks they can sneak across windswept rock in the dark without being
heard." .
Any trace of amusement faded as Richard stared off toward the western
horizon where stars had yet to appear. "But I fear that pebbles strewn along
the ground won't do any good for eyes watching from a dark sky." He turned
back to Jennsen, brightening, as if remembering he had been speaking to her.
"Still, everyone makes mistakes."
Cara wiped droplets of water from her sly smile as she handed Richard
back his waterskin. "Lord Rahl is always making mistakes, especially simple
ones. That's why he needs me around."
"Is that right, little miss perfect?" Richard chided as he snatched the
waterskin from her hand. "Maybe if you weren't 'helping' keep me out of
trouble, we wouldn't have black-tipped races shadowing us."
"What else could I do?" Cara blurted out. "I was trying to help--to
protect you both." Her smile had withered. "I'm sorry, Lord Rahl."
Richard sighed. "I know," he admitted as he reassuringly squeezed her
shoulder. "We'll figure it out."
Richard turned back to Jennsen. "Everyone makes mistakes. How a person
deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character."
Jennsen nodded as she thought it over. "My mother was always afraid of
making a mistake that would get us killed. She used to do
things like you did, in case my father's men were trying to sneak up on
us. We always lived in forests, though, so it was dry twigs, rather
than pebbles, that she often scattered around us."
Jennsen pulled on a ringlet of her hair as she stared off into dark
memories. "It was raining the night they came. If those men stepped on
twigs, she wouldn't have been able to hear it." She ran trembling fingers
over the silver hilt of the knife at her belt. "They were big, and they
surprised her, but still, she got one of them before they ..."
Darken Rahl had wanted Jennsen dead because she had been born ungifted.
Any ruler of that bloodline killed offspring such as she. Richard and Kahlan
believed that a person's life was their own to live, and that birth did not
qualify that right.
Jensen's haunted eyes turned up to Richard. "She got one of them before
they killed her."
With one arm, Richard pulled Jennsen into a tender embrace. They all
understood such terrible loss. The man who had lovingly raised
Richard had been killed by Darken Rahl himself. Darken Rahl had orderd
the murders of all of Kahlan's sister Confessors The men who killed
Jennsen's mother, though, were men from the Imperial Order sent to trick
her, to murder in order to make her believe it was Richard who was after
her.
Kahlan felt a forlorn wave of helplessness at all they faced. She knew
what it was to be alone, afraid, and overwhelmed by powerful men filled with
blind faith and the lust for blood, men devoutly believing that mankind's
salvation required slaughter.
"I'd give anything for her to know that it wasn't you who sent those
men." Jennsen's soft voice held the dejected sum of what it was to have
suffered such a loss, to have no solution to the crushing solitude it left
in its wake. "I wish my mother could have known the truth, known what you
two are really like."
"She's with the good spirits and finally at peace," Kahlan whispered in
sympathy, even if she now had reason to question the enduring validity of
such things.
Jennsen nodded as she swiped her fingers across her cheek. "What
mistake did you make, Cara?" she finally asked.
Rather than be angered by the question, and perhaps because it had been
asked in innocent empathy, Cara answered with quiet candor. "It has to do
with that little problem we mentioned before."
"You mean it's about the thing you want me to touch?"
By the light of the moon's narrow crescent, Kahlan could see Cara's
scowl return. "And the sooner the better."
Richard rubbed his fingertips across his brow. "I'm not sure about
that."
Kahlan, too, thought that Cara's notion was too simplistic.
Cara threw her arms up. "But Lord Rahl, we can't just leave it--"
"Let's get camp set up before it's pitch dark," Richard said in quiet
command. "What we need right now is food and sleep."
For once, Cara saw the sense in his orders and didn't object. When he
had earlier been out scouting alone, she had confided in Kahlan that she was
worried at how weary Richard looked and had suggested that, since there were
enough other people, they shouldn't wake him for a turn at watch that night.
"I'll check the area," Cara said, "and make sure there aren't any more
of those birds sitting on a rock watching us with those black eyes of
theirs."
Jennsen peered around as if fearing that a black-tipped race might
swoop in out of the darkness.
Richard countermanded Cara's plans with a dismissive shake of his head.
"They're gone for now."
"You said they were tracking you." Jennsen stroked Betty's neck when
the goat nudged her, seeking comfort. The twins were still hiding under
their mother's round belly. "I never saw them before now. They weren't
around yesterday, or today. They didn't show up until just this evening. If
they really were tracking you, then they wouldn't be gone for such a
stretch. They'd have to stick close to you all the time."
"They can leave us for a time in order to hunt--or to make us doubt our
suspicion of their true intent--and, even if we keep going, they can easily
find us when they return. That's the advantage the black-tipped races have:
they don't need to watch us every moment."
Jennsen planted her fists on her hips. "Then how in the world could you
possibly be sure they're tracking you?" She flicked a hand out toward the
darkness beyond. "You often see the same kind of birds. You see ravens,
sparrows, geese, finches, hummingbirds, doves--how do you know that any one
of them aren't following you and that the black-tipped races are?"
"I know," Richard said as he turned and started back toward the wagon.
"Now, let's get our things out and set up camp."
Kahlan caught Jennsen's arm as she headed after him, about to renew her
objections. "Let him be for tonight, Jennsen?" Kahlan lifted an eyebrow.
"Please? About this, anyway."
Kahlan was pretty sure that the black-tipped races really were
following them, but it wasn't so much an issue of her being sure of it
herself. Rather, she had confidence in Richard's word in matters such is
this. Kahlan was versed in affairs of state, protocol, ceremony, and
royalty; she was familiar with various cultures, the origins of ancient
deputes between lands, and the history of treaties; and she was con-versant
in any number of languages, including the duplicitous dialect of diplomacy.
In such areas, Richard trusted her word when she ex-pressed her conviction.
In matters about something so odd as strange birds following them, she
knew better than to question Richard's word.
Kahlan knew, too, that he didn't yet have all the answers. She had seen
him like this before, distant and withdrawn, as he struggled to understand
the important connections and patterns in relevant details only he
perceived. She knew that he needed to be left alone about it. Pestering him
for answers before he had them only served to distract him from what he
needed to do.
Watching Richard's back as he walked away, Jennsen finally forced a
smile of agreement. Then, as if struck with another thought, her eyes
widened. She leaned close to Kahlan and whispered, "Is this about magic?"
"We don't know what it's about."
Jennsen nodded. "I'll help. Whatever I can do, I want to help."
For the time being, Kahlan kept her worries to herself as she circled
an arm around the young woman's shoulders in an appreciative embrace and
walked her back toward the wagon.
In the immense, silent void of night, Kahlan could clearly hear
Fried-rich, off to the side, speaking gently to the horses. He patted their
shoulders or ran a hand along their flanks each time on his way by as he
went about grooming and picketing them for the night. With dark-ness
shrouding the empty expanse beyond, the familiar
task of caring for the animals made the unfamiliar surroundings seem a
little less forbidding.
Friedrich was an older, unassuming man of average height. Despite his
age, he had undertaken a long and difficult journey to the Old World to find
Richard. Friedrich had undertaken that journey, carrying with him important
information, soon after his wife had died. The terrible sadness of that loss
still haunted his gentle features. Kahlan supposed that it always would.
In the dim light, she saw Jennsen smile as Tom looked her way. A boyish
grin momentarily overcame the big, blond-headed D'Haran when he spotted her,
but he quickly bent back to work, pulling bedrolls from a corner beneath the
seat. He stepped over supplies in his wagon and handed a load down to
Richard.
"There's no wood for a fire, Lord Rahl." Tom rested a foot on the
chafing rail, laying a forearm over his bent knee. "But, if you like, I have
a little charcoal to use for cooking."
"What I'd really like is for you to stop calling me 'Lord Rahl.' If
we're anywhere near the wrong people and you slip up and call me that, we'll
all be in a great deal of trouble."
Tom grinned and patted the ornate letter "R" on the silver handle of
the knife at his belt. "Not to worry, Lord Rahl. Steel against steel."
Richard sighed at the oft-repeated maxim involving the bond of the
D'Haran people to their Lord Rahl, and he to them. Tom and Friedrich had
promised they wouldn't use Richard's and Kahlan's titles around other
people. A lifetime's habits were difficult to change, though, and Kahlan
knew that they felt uncomfortable not using titles when they were so
obviously alone.
"So," Tom said as he handed down the last bedroll, "would you like a
small fire for cooking?"
"Hot as it is, it seems to me we could do without any more heat."
Richard set the bedrolls atop a sack of oats already unloaded. "Besides, I'd
prefer not to take the time. I'd like to be on our way at first light and we
need to get a good rest."
"Can't argue with you there," Tom said, straightening his big frame. "I
don't like us being so out in the open where we could easily be spotted."
Richard swept his hand in a suggestive arc across the dark vault above.
Tom cast a wary eye skyward. He nodded reluctantly before turning back
to the task of digging out tools to mend the breeching and wooden buckets to
water the horses. Richard put a boot on a spoke of the cargo wagon's stout
rear wheel and climbed up to help.
Tom, a shy but cheerful man who had appeared only the day before, right
after they'd encountered Jennsen, looked to be a merchant who hauled trade
goods. Hauling goods in his wagon, Kahlan and Richard had learned, gave him
an excuse to travel where and when he needed as a member of a covert group
whose true profession was to protect the Lord Rahl from unseen plots and
threats.
Speaking in a low voice, Jennsen leaned closer to Kahlan. "Vultures can
tell you, from a great distance, where a kill lies--by the way they circle
and gather, I mean. I guess I can see how the races could be like
that--birds that someone could spot from afar in order to know there was
something below."
Kahlan didn't say anything. Her head ached, she was hungry, and she
just wanted to go to sleep, not to discuss things she couldn't answer. She
wondered how many times Richard had viewed her own insistent questions in
the same way she now viewed Jennsen's. Kahlan silently vowed to try to be at
least half as patient as Richard always was.
"The thing is," Jennsen went on, matter-of-factly, "how would someone
get birds to ... well, you know, circle around you like vultures over a
carcass in order to know where you were?" Jennsen leaned in again and
whispered so as to be sure that Richard wouldn't hear. "Maybe they're sent
with magic to follow specific people."
Cara fixed Jennsen with a murderous glare. Kahlan idly wondered if the
Mord-Sith would clobber Richard's sister, or extend her leniency because she
was family. Discussions about magic, especially in the context of its danger
to Richard or Kahlan, made Cara testy. Mord-Sith were fearless in the face
of death, but they did not like magic and weren't shy about making their
distaste clear.
In a way, such hostility toward magic characterized the nature and
purpose of Mord-Sith; they were singularly able to appropriate the gifted's
power and use it to destroy them. Mord-Sith had been mercilessly trained to
be ruthless at their task. It was from the madness of this duty that Richard
had freed them.
It seemed obvious enough to Kahlan, though, that if the races really
were tracking them it would have to involve conjuring of some sort. It was
the questions raised by that assumption that so worried her.
When Kahlan didn't debate the theory, Jennsen asked, "Why do you think
someone would be using the races to track you?"
Kahlan lifted an eyebrow at the young woman. "Jennsen, we're in the
middle of the Old World. Being hunted in enemy territory is hardly
surprising."
"I guess you're right," Jennsen admitted. "It just seems that there
would have to be more to it." Despite the heat, she rubbed her arms as if a
chill had just run through her. "You have no idea how much Emperor Jagang
wants to catch you."
Kahlan smiled to herself. "Oh, I think I do."
Jennsen watched Richard a moment as he filled the buckets with water
from barrels carried in the wagon. Richard leaned down and handed one to
Friedrich. Ears turned attentively ahead, the horses all watched, eager for
a drink. Betty, also watching as her twins suckled, bleated her longing for
a drink. After filling the buckets, Richard submerged his waterskin to fill
it, too.
Jennsen shook her head and looked again into Kahlan's eyes. "Emperor
Jagang tricked me into thinking Richard wanted me dead." She glanced briefly
over at the men engaged in their work before she went on. "I was there with
Jagang when he attacked Aydindril."
Kahlan felt as if her heart came up in her throat at hearing firsthand
confirmation of that brute invading the place where she'd grown up. She
didn't think she could bear to hear the answer, but she had to ask. "Did he
destroy the city?"
After Richard had been captured and taken from her, Kahlan, with Cara
at her side, had led the D'Haran army against Jagang's vast invading horde
from the Old World. Month after month, Kahlan and the army fought against
impossible odds, retreating all the way up through the Midlands.
By the time they lost the battle for the Midlands, it had been over a
year since Kahlan had seen Richard; he had seemingly been cast into
oblivion. When at last she learned where he was being held, Kahlan and Cara
had raced south, to the Old World, only to arrive just as Richard ignited a
firestorm of revolution in the heart of Jagang's homeland.
Before she'd left, Kahlan had evacuated Aydindril and left the
Confessors' Palace empty of all those who called it home. Life, not a place,
was what mattered.
"He never got a chance to destroy the city," Jennsen said. "When we
arrived at the Confessors' Palace, Emperor Jagang thought he had you and
Richard cornered. But out in front waited a spear holding the head of the
emperor's revered spiritual leader: Brother Narev." Her voice lowered
meaningfully. "Jagang found the message left with the head."
Kahlan remembered well the day Richard had sent the head of that evil
man, along with a message for Jagang, on the long journey north. "
'Compliments of Richard Rahl.'"
"That's right," Jennsen said. "You can't imagine Jagang's rage." She
paused to be certain Kahlan heeded her warning. "He'll do anything to get
his hands on you and Richard."
Kahlan hardly needed Jennsen to tell her how much Jagang wanted them.
"All the more reason to get away--hide somewhere," Cara said.
"And the races?" Kahlan reminded her.
Cara cast a suggestive look at Jennsen before speaking in a quiet voice
to Kahlan. "If we do something about the rest of it, maybe that problem
would go away, too." Cara's goal was to protect Richard. She would be
perfectly happy to put him in a hole somewhere and board him over if she
thought doing so would keep harm from reaching him.
Jennsen waited, watching the two of them. Kahlan wasn't at all sure
there was anything Jennsen could do. Richard had thought it over and had
come to have serious doubts. Kahlan had been amply skeptical without
Richard's doubts. Still...
"Maybe" was all she said.
"If there's anything I can do, I want to try it." Jennsen fussed with a
button on the front of her dress. "Richard doesn't think I can help. If it
involves magic, wouldn't he know? Richard is a wizard, he would know about
magic."
Kahlan sighed. There was so much more to it. "Richard was raised in
Westland--far from the Midlands, even farther from D'Hara. He grew up in
isolation from the rest of the New World, never knowing anything at all
about the gift. Despite all he's so far learned and some of the remarkable
things he's accomplished, he still knows very little of his birthright."
They had already told Jennsen this, but she seemed skeptical, as if she
suspected there was a certain amount of exaggeration in what they were
telling her about Richard's unfamiliarity with his own gift. Her big brother
had, after all, in one day rescued her from a lifetime of terror. Such a
profound awakening probably seemed tangled in magic to one so devoid of it.
Perhaps it was.
"Well, if Richard is as ignorant of magic as you say," Jennsen pressed
in a meaningful voice, finally having arrived at the heart of her purpose,
"then maybe we shouldn't worry so much about what he thinks. Maybe we should
just not tell him and go ahead and do whatever it is Cara wants me to do to
fix your problem and get the races off your backs."
Nearby, Betty contentedly licked clean her little white twins. The
sweltering darkness and vast weight of the surrounding silence seemed as
eternal as death itself.
Kahlan gently took ahold of Jennsen's collar. "I grew up walking the
corridors of the Wizard's Keep and the Confessors' Palace. I know a lot
about magic."
She pulled the young woman closer. "I can tell you that such naive
notions, when applied to ominous matters like this, can easily get people
killed. There is always the possibility that it's as simple as you fancy,
but most likely it's complex beyond your imagination and any rash attempt at
a remedy could ignite a conflagration that would consume us all. Added to
all that is the grave peril of not knowing how someone, such as yourself,
someone so pristinely ungifted as to be forewarned of in that ancient book
Richard has, might affect the equation.
"There are times when there is no choice but to act immediately; even
then it must be with your best judgment, using all your experience and
everything you do know. As long as there's a choice, though, you don't act
in matters of magic until you can be sure of the consequence. You don't ever
just take a stab in the dark."
Kahlan knew all too well the terrible truth of such an admonition.
Jennsen seemed unconvinced. "But if he doesn't really know much about magic,
his fears might only be--"
"I've walked through dead cities, walked among the mutilated bodies of
men, women, and children the Imperial Order has left in their wake. I've
seen young women not as old as you make thoughtless, innocent mistakes and
end up chained to a stake to be used by gangs of soldiers for days before
being tortured to death just for the amusement of men who get sick pleasure
out of raping a woman as she's in the throes of death."
Kahlan gritted her teeth as memories flashed mercilessly before her
mind's eye. She tightened her grip on Jennsen's collar.
"All of my sister Confessors died in such a fashion, and they knew
about their power and how to use it. The men who caught them knew, too, and
used that knowledge against them. My closest girlhood friend died in my arms
after such men were finished with her.
"Life means nothing to people like that; they worship death.
"Those are the kind of people who butchered your mother. Those are the
kind of people who will have us, too, if we make a mistake. Those are the
kind of people laying traps for us--including traps constructed of magic.
"As for Richard not knowing about magic, there are times when he is so
ignorant of the simplest things that I can scarcely believe it and must
remind myself that he grew up not being taught anything at all about his
gift. In those things, I try to be patient and to guide him as best I can.
He takes very seriously what I tell him.
"There are other times when I suspect that he actually grasps
complexities of magic that neither I nor anyone alive has ever before
fathomed or even so much as imagined. In those things he must be his own
guide.
"The lives of a great many good people depend on us not making careless
mistakes, especially careless mistakes with magic. As the Mother Confessor
I'll not allow reckless whim to jeopardize all those lives. Now, do you
understand me?"
Kahlan had nightmares about the things she had seen, about those who
had been caught, about those who had made a simple mistake and paid the
price with their life. She was not many years beyond Jennsen's age, but
right then that gulf was vastly more than a mere handful of years.
Kahlan gave Jennsen's collar a sharp yank. "Do you understand me?"
Wide-eyed, Jennsen swallowed. "Yes, Mother Confessor." Finally, her
gaze broke toward the ground.
Only then did Kahlan release her.
Anyone hungry?" Tom called to the three women.
Richard pulled a lantern from the wagon and, after finally getting it
lit with a steel and flint, set it on a shelf of rock. He passed a
suspicious look among the three women as they approached, but apparently
thought better of saying anything.
As Kahlan sat close at Richard's side, Tom offered him the first chunk
he sliced from a long length of sausage. When Richard declined, Kahlan
accepted it. Tom sliced off another piece and passed it to Cara and then
another to Friedrich.
Jennsen had gone to the wagon to search through her pack. Kahlan
thought that maybe she just wanted to be alone a moment to collect herself.
Kahlan knew how harsh her words had sounded, but she couldn't allow herself
to do Jennsen the disservice of coddling her with pleasing lies.
With Jennsen reassuringly close by, Betty lay down beside Rusty,
Jennsen's red roan mare. The horse and the goat were fast friends. The other
horses seemed pleased by the visitor and took keen interest in her two kids,
giving them a good sniff when they came close enough.
When Jennsen walked over displaying a small piece of carrot, Betty rose
up in a rush. Her tail went into a blur of expectant wagging. The horses
whinnied and tossed their heads, hoping not to be left out. Each in turn
received a small treat and a scratch behind the ears.
Had they a fire, they could have cooked a stew, rice, or beans;
grid-died some bannock; or maybe have made a nice soup. Despite how hungry
she was, Kahlan didn't think she would have had the energy to cook, so she
was content to settle for what was at hand. Jennsen retrieved strips of
dried meat from her pack, offering them around. Richard declined this, too,
instead eating hard travel biscuits, nuts, and dried fruit.
"But don't you want any meat?" Jennsen asked as she sat down on her
bedroll opposite him. "You need more than that to eat. You need something
substantial."
"I can't eat meat. Not since the gift came to life in me."
Jennsen's wrinkled her nose with a puzzled look. "Why would your gift
not allow you to eat meat?"
Richard leaned to the side, resting his weight on an elbow as he
momentarily surveyed the sweep of stars, searching for the words to explain.
"Balance, in nature," he said at last, "is a condition resulting from the
interaction of all things in existence. On a simple level, look at how
predators and prey are in balance. If there were too many predators, and the
prey were all eaten, then the thriving predators, too, would end up starving
and dying out.
"The lack of balance would be deadly to both prey and predator; the
world, for them both, would end. They exist in balance because acting in
accordance with their nature results in balance. Balance is not their
conscious intent.
"People are different. Without our conscious intent, we don't
necessarily achieve the balance that our survival often requires.
"We must learn to use our minds, to think, if we're to survive. We
plant crops, we hunt for fur to keep us warm, or raise sheep and gather
their wool and learn how to weave it into cloth. We have to learn how to
build shelter. We balance the value of one thing against another and trade
goods to exchange what we've made for what we need that others have made or
grown or built or woven or hunted.
"We balance what we need with what we know of the realities of the
world. We balance what we want against our rational self-interest, not
against fulfilling a momentary impulse, because we know that our long-term
survival requires it. We use wood to build a fire in the hearth in order to
keep from freezing on a winter night, but, despite how cold we might be when
we're building the fire, we don't build the fire too big, knowing that to do
so would risk burning our shelter down after we're warm and asleep."
"But people also act out of shortsighted selfishness, greed, and lust
for power. They destroy lives." Jennsen lifted her arm out toward the
darkness. "Look at what the Imperial Order is doing--and succeeding at. They
don't care about weaving wool or building houses or trading goods. They
slaughter people just for conquest. They take what they want."
"And we resist them. We've learned to understand the value of life, so
we fight to reestablish reason. We are the balance."
Jennsen hooked some of her hair back behind an ear. "What does all this
have to do with not eating meat?"
"I was told that wizards, too, must balance themselves, their gift--
their power--in the things they do. I fight against those, like the Imperial
Order, who would destroy life because it has no value to them, but that
requires that I do the same terrible thing by destroying what is my highest
value--life. Since my gift has to do with being a warrior, abstinence from
eating meat is believed to be the balance for the killing I'm forced to do."
"What happens if you eat meat?"
Kahlan knew that Richard had cause, from only the day before, to need
the balance of not eating meat.
"Even the idea of eating meat nauseates me. I've done it when I've had
to, but it's something I avoid if at all possible. Magic deprived of balance
has grave consequences, just like building a fire in the hearth."
The thought occurred to Kahlan that Richard carried the Sword of Truth,
and perhaps that weapon also imposed its own need for balance. Richard had
been rightly named the Seeker of Truth by the First Wizard himself, Zeddicus
Zu'l Zorander--Zedd, Richard's grandfather, the man who had helped raise
him, and from whom Richard had additionally inherited the gift. Richard's
gift had been passed down not only from the Rahl bloodline, but the Zorander
as well. Balance indeed.
Rightly named Seekers had been carrying that very same sword for nearly
three thousand years. Perhaps Richard's understanding of the need for
balance had helped him to survive the things he'd faced.
With her teeth, Jennsen tugged off a strip of dried meat as she thought
it over. "So, because you have to fight and sometimes kill people, you can't
eat meat as the balance for that terrible act?"
Richard nodded as he chewed dried apricots.
"It must be dreadful to have the gift," Jennsen said in a quiet voice.
"To have something so destructive that it requires you balance it in some
way."
She looked away from Richard's gray eyes. Kahlan knew what a difficult
experience it sometimes was to meet his direct and incisive gaze.
"I used to feel that way," he said, "when I first was named the Seeker
and given the sword, and even more so later, when I learned that I had the
gift. I didn't want to have the gift, didn't want the things the gift could
do, just as I hadn't wanted the sword because of the things in me that I
thought shouldn't ever be brought out."
"But now you don't mind as much, having the sword, or the gift?"
"You have a knife and have used it." Richard leaned toward her, holding
out his hands. "You have hands. Do you hate your knife, or hands?"
"Of course not. But what does that have to do with having the gift?"
"Having the gift is simply how I was born, like being born male, or
female, or with blue, or brown, or green eyes--or with two hands. I don't
hate my hands because I could potentially strangle someone with them. It's
my mind that directs my hands. My hands don't act of their own accord; to
think so is to ignore the truth of what each thing is, its true nature. You
have to recognize the truth of things if you're to achieve balance--or come
to truly understand anything, for that matter."
Kahlan wondered why she didn't require balance the way Richard did. Why
was it so vital for him, but not for her? Despite how much she wanted to go
to sleep, she couldn't keep silent. "I often use my Confessor's power for
that same end--to kill--and I don't have to keep in balance by not eating
meat."
"The Sisters of the Light claim that the veil that separates the world
of the living from the world of the dead is maintained through magic. More
precisely, they claim that the veil is here," Richard said, tapping the side
of his temple, "in those of us who have the gift--wizards and to a lesser
extent sorceresses. They claim that balance for those of us with the gift is
essential because in us, within our gift, resides the veil, making us, in
essence, the guardians of the veil, the balance between worlds.
"Maybe they're right. I have both sides of the gift: Additive and
Subtractive. Maybe that makes it different for me. Maybe having both sides
makes it more important than usual for me to keep my gift in balance."
Kahlan wondered just how much of that might be true. She feared to
think how extensively the balance of magic itself had been altered by her
doing.
The world was unraveling, in more ways than one. But there had been no
choice.
Cara dismissively waggled a piece of dried meat before them. "All this
balance business is just a message from the good spirits--in that other
world--telling Lord Rahl to leave such fighting to us. If he did, then he
wouldn't have to worry about balance, or what he can and can't eat. If he
would stop putting himself in mortal danger then his balance would be just
fine and he could eat a whole goat."
Jennsen's eyebrows went up.
"You know what I mean," Cara grumbled.
Tom leaned in. "Maybe Mistress Cara is right, Lord Rahl. You have
people to protect you. You should let them do it and you could better put
your abilities to the task of being the Lord Rahl."
Richard closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his fingertips. "If
I had to wait for Cara to save me all the time, I'm afraid I'd have to do
without a head."
Cara rolled her eyes at his wisp of a smile and went back to her
sausage.
Studying his face in the dim light as he sucked on a small bite of
dried biscuit, Kahlan thought that Richard didn't look well, and that it was
more than simply being exhausted. The soft glow of light from the lantern
lit one side of his face, leaving the rest in darkness, as if he were only
half there, half in this world and half in the world of darkness, as if he
were the veil between.
She leaned close and brushed back the hair that had fallen across his
forehead, using the excuse to feel his brow. He felt hot, but they were all
hot and sweating, so she couldn't really tell if he had a fever, but she
didn't think so.
Her hand slipped down to cup his face, kindling his smile. She thought
she could lose herself in the pleasure of just looking into his eyes. It
made her heart ache with joy to see his smile. She smiled back, a smile she
gave no one but him.
Kahlan had an urge to kiss him, too, but there always seemed to be
people around and the kind of kiss she really wanted to give him wasn't the
kind of kiss you gave in front of others.
"It seems so hard to imagine," Friedrich said to Richard. "I mean, the
Lord Rahl himself, not knowing about the gift as he grew up." Friedrich
shook his head. "It seems so hard to believe."
"My grandfather, Zedd, has the gift," Richard said as he leaned back.
"He wanted to help raise me away from magic, much like Jennsen-- hidden away
where Darken Rahl couldn't get at me. That's why he wanted me raised in
Westland, on the other side of the boundary from magic."
"And even your grandfather--a wizard--never let on that he was gifted?"
Tom asked.
"No, not until Kahlan came to Westland. Looking back on it, I realize
that there were a lot of little things that told me he was more than he
seemed, but growing up I never knew. He just always seemed wizardly to me in
the sense that he seemed to know about everything in the world around us. He
opened up that world for me, making me want to all the time know more, but
the gift wasn't ever the magic he showed me--life was what he showed me."
"It's really true, then," Friedrich said, "that Westland was set aside
to be a place without magic."
Richard smiled at the mention of his home of Westland. "It is. I grew
up in the Hartland woods, right near the boundary, and I never saw magic.
Except maybe for Chase."
"Chase?" Tom asked.
"A friend of mine--a boundary warden. Fellow about your size, Tom.
Whereas you serve to protect the Lord Rahl, Chase's charge was the boundary,
or rather, keeping people away from it. He told me that his job was keeping
away the prey--people--so that the things that come out of the boundary
wouldn't get any stronger. He worked to maintain balance." Richard smiled to
himself. "He didn't have the gift, but I often thought that the things that
man could pull off had to be magic."
Friedrich, too, was smiling at Richard's story. "I lived in D'Hara all
my life. When I was young those men who guarded the boundary were my heroes
and I wanted to join them."
"Why didn't you?" Richard asked.
"When the boundary went up I was too young." Friedrich stared off into
memories, then sought to change the subject. "How much longer until we get
out of this wasteland, Lord Rahl?"
Richard looked east, as if he could see off into the black of night
beyond the dim circle of lantern light. "If we keep up our pace, a few more
days and we'll be out of the worst of it, I'd say. It gets rockier now as
the ground continues to rise up toward the distant mountains. The traveling
will be more difficult but at least as we get higher it shouldn't be quite
so hot."
"How far to this thing that... that Cara thinks I should touch?"
Jennsen asked.
Richard studied her face a moment. "I'm not so sure that's a good
idea."
"But we are going there?"
"Yes."
Jennsen picked at the strip of dried meat. "What is this thing that
Cara touched, anyway? Cara and Kahlan don't seem to want to tell me."
"I asked them not to tell you," Richard said.
"But why? If we're going to see it, then why wouldn't you want to tell
me what it is?"
"Because you don't have the gift," Richard said. "I don't want to
influence what you see."
Jennsen blinked. "What difference could that make?"
"I haven't had time to translate much of it yet, but from what I gather
from the book Friedrich brought me, even those who don't have the gift, in
the common sense, have at least some tiny spark of it. In that way they are
able to interact with the magic in the world--much like you must be born
with eyes to see color. Being born with eyes, you can see and understand a
grand painting, even though you may not have the ability to create such a
painting yourself.
"The gifted Lord Rahl gives birth to only one gifted heir. He may have
other children, but rarely are any of them ever also gifted. Still, they do
have this infinitesimal spark, as does everyone else. Even they, so to
speak, can see color.
"The book says, though, that there are rare offspring of a gifted Lord
Rahl, like you, who are born devoid of any trace whatsoever of the gift. The
book calls them pillars of Creation. Much like those born without eyes can't
perceive color, those born like you can't perceive magic.
"But even that is imprecise, because with you it's more than simply not
perceiving magic. For someone born blind, color exists, they just aren't
able to see it. For you, though, it isn't that you simply can't perceive
magic; for you magic does not exist--it isn't a reality."
"How is such a thing possible?" Jennsen asked.
"I don't know," Richard said. "When our ancestors created the bond of
the Lord Rahl to the D'Haran people, it carried the unique ability to
consistently bear a gifted heir. Magic needs balance. Maybe they had to make
it work like this, have this counter of those born like you, in order for
the magic they created to work; maybe they didn't realize what would happen
and inadvertently created the balance."
Jennsen cleared her throat. "What would happen if... you know, if I
were to have children?"
Richard surveyed Jennsen's eyes for what seemed a painfully long time.
"You would bear offspring like you."
Jennsen sat forward, her hands reflecting her emotional entreaty. "Even
if I marry someone with that spark of the gift? Someone able to perceive
color, as you called it? Even then my child would be like me?"
"Even then and every time," Richard said with quiet certitude. "You are
a broken link in the chain of the gift. According to the book, once the line
of all those born with the spark of the gift, including those with the gift
as it is in me, going back thousands of years, going back forever, is
broken, it is broken for all time. It cannot be restored. Once forfeited in
such a marriage, no descendant of that line can ever restore the link to the
gift. When these children marry, they too would be as you, breaking the
chain in the line of those they marry. Their children would be the same, and
so on.
"That's why the Lord Rahl always hunted down ungifted offspring and
eliminated them. You would be the genesis of something the world has never
had before: those untouched by the gift. Every offspring of every descendant
would end the line of the spark of the gift in everyone they married. The
world, mankind, would be changed forever.
"This is the reason the book calls those like you 'pillars of
Creation.' "
The silence seemed brittle.
"And that's what this place is called, too," Tom said as he pointed a
thumb back over his shoulder, seeming to feel the need to say something into
the quiet, "the Pillars of Creation." He looked at the faces surrounding the
weak light coming from the sputtering lantern. "Seems a strange coincidence
that both those like Jennsen and this place would be called the same thing."
Richard stared off into the darkness toward that terrible place where
Kahlan would have died had he made a mistake with the magic involved. "I
don't think it's a coincidence. They are connected, somehow."
The book--The Pillars of Creation--describing those born like Jennsen
was written in the ancient language of High D'Haran. Few people still living
understood High D'Haran. Richard had begun to learn it in order to unravel
important information in other books they'd found that were from the time of
the great war.
That war, extinguished three thousand years before, had somehow ignited
once again, and was burning uncontrolled through the world. Kahlan feared to
think of the central--if inadvertent--part she and Richard had played in
making it possible.
Jennsen leaned in, as if looking for some thread of hope. "How do you
think the two might be connected?"
Richard let out a tired sigh. "I don't know, yet."
With a finger, Jennsen rolled a pebble around in a small circle,
leaving a tiny rut in the dust. "All of those things about me being a pillar
of Creation, being the break in the link of the gift, makes me feel
somehow... dirty."
"Dirty?" Tom asked, looking hurt to hear her even suggest such a thing.
"Jennsen, why would you feel that way?"
"Those like me are also called 'holes in the world.' I guess I can see
why, now."
Richard leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I know what
it's like to feel regret for how you were born, for what you have, or don't
have. I hated being born the way I was--with the gift. But I came to realize
how senseless such feelings are, how completely wrong it was to think that
way."
"But it's different with me," she said as she pushed at the sand with a
finger, erasing the little ruts she'd made with the pebble. "There are
others like you--wizards or sorceresses with the gift. Everyone else can at
least see colors, as you put it. I'm the only one like this."
Richard gazed at his half sister, a beautiful, bright, ungifted half
sister that any previous Lord Rahl would have murdered on the spot, and was
overcome with a radiant smile. "Jennsen, I think of you as born pure. You're
like a new snowflake, different than any other, and startlingly beautiful."
Looking up at him, Jennsen was overcome with a smile of her own. "I
never thought of it that way." Her smile withered as she thought about his
words. "But still, I'd be destroying--"
"You would be creating, not destroying," Richard said. "Magic exists.
It cannot possess the 'right' to exist. To think so would be to ignore the
true nature--the reality--of things. People, if they don't take the lives of
others, have the right to live their life. You can't say that because you
were born with red hair you supplanted the 'right' of brown hair to be born
on your head."
Jennsen giggled at such a concept. It was good to see the smile taking
firmer hold. By the look on Tom's face, he agreed.
"So," Jennsen finally asked, "what about this thing we're going to
see?"
"If the thing Cara touched has been altered by someone with the gift,
then since you can't see the magic, you might see something we can't see:
what lies beneath that magic."
Jennsen rubbed the edge of her boot heel. "And you think that will tell
you something important?"
"I don't know. It may be useful, or it may not, but I want to know what
you see--with your special vision--without any suggestion from us."
"If you're so worried about it, why did you leave it? Aren't you afraid
someone might come across it and take it?"
"I worry about a lot of things," Richard said.
"Even if it really is something altered by magic and she sees it for
what it truly is," Cara said, "that doesn't mean that it still isn't what it
seems to us, or that it isn't just as dangerous."
Richard nodded. "At least we'll know that much more about it. Anything
we learn might help us in some way."
Cara scowled. "I just want her to turn it back over."
Richard gave her a look designed to keep her from saying anything else
about it. Cara huffed, leaned in, and took one of Richard's dried apricots.
She scowled at him as she popped the apricot into her mouth.
As soon as supper was finished, Jennsen suggested that they pack all
the food safely back in the wagon so that Betty wouldn't help herself to it
in the night. Betty was always hungry. At least, with her two kids, she now
had a taste of what it was like to be badgered for food.
Kahlan thought that Friedrich should be given consideration, because of
his age, so she asked him if he'd like to take first watch. First watch was
easier than being awakened in the middle of the night to stand watch between
stretches of sleep. He smiled his appreciation as he nodded his agreement.
After opening his and Kahlan's bedroll, Richard doused the lantern. The
night was sweltering but crystal clear so that, after Kahlan's eyes
adjusted, the sweep of stars was enough to see by, if not very well. One of
the white twins thought the newly unfurled bedrolls would be a perfect place
to romp. Kahlan scooped up the leggy bundle and returned it to its
tail-wagging mother.
As she lay down beside Richard, Kahlan saw the dark shape of Jennsen
curl up by Betty and collect the twins in the tender bed of her arms, where
they quickly settled down.
Richard leaned over and gently kissed Kahlan's lips. "I love you, you
know."
"If we're ever alone, Lord Rahl," Kahlan whispered back, "I'd like to
have more than a quick kiss."
He laughed softly and kissed her forehead before lying on his side,
away from her. She had been expecting an intimate promise, or at least a
lighthearted remark.
Kahlan curled up behind him and rested a hand on his shoulder.
"Richard," she whispered, "are you all right?"
It took him longer to answer than she would have liked. "I have a
splitting headache."
She wanted to ask what kind of headache, but she didn't want the tiny
spark of fear she harbored to gain the glow of credence by voicing it aloud.
"It's different from the headaches I had before," Richard said, as if
in answer to her thoughts. "I suppose it's this wicked heat on top of not
having had any sleep for so long."
"I suppose." Kahlan bunched up the blanket she was using for a pillow
to make a lump that would press against the sore spot at the base of her
skull. "The heat is making my head pound, too." She gently rubbed the back
of his shoulder. "Have a good sleep, then."
She was exhausted and aching all over, and it felt delicious to lie
down. Her head felt better, too, with the soft lump of blanket pressed
against the back of her neck. With her hand resting against Richard's
shoulder, feeling his slow breathing, Kahlan fell into a dead sleep.
As tired as she was, it was a marvelous sensation being beside Richard
and letting herself go, letting her concerns and worries go for the time
being, and so effortlessly sinking into sleep.
But the sleep seemed only just started when she woke to find Cara
gently shaking her shoulder.
Kahlan blinked up at the familiar silhouette standing over her. She
ached to go back to sleep, to be left alone to be so wonderfully asleep
again.
"My watch?" Kahlan asked.
Cara nodded. "I'll stand it if you'd like."
Kahlan glanced over her shoulder as she sat up, seeing that Richard was
still fast asleep. "No," she whispered. "You get some sleep. You need rest,
too."
Kahlan yawned and stretched her back. She took Cara's elbow and pulled
her a short distance away, out of earshot, and leaned close. "I think you're
right. There's more than enough of us to stand watch and all still get
enough rest. Let's let Richard sleep till morning."
Cara smiled her agreement before heading for her bedroll. Conspiracy
designed to protect Richard suited the Mord-Sith.
Kahlan yawned and stretched again, at the same time forcing herself to
shake the lingering haze of sleep from her mind, to be alert. Pulling her
hair back from her face and flipping it over her shoulder, she scanned the
wasteland all around, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Everything
beyond their camp was as still as death. Mountains blacked out the
glittering sweep of stars in a jagged line all the way around the horizon.
Kahlan took careful assessment of everyone, making sure they were all
accounted for. Cara already looked comfortable. Tom slept not far from the
horses. Friedrich was asleep on the other side of the horses. Jennsen was
curled up beside Betty, but by her movements, the way she turned from her
side to her back, didn't look asleep. The babies had moved and now lay
sprawled with their heads butted up tight against their mother.
Kahlan was always especially vigilant right at change of watch. Change
of watch was a prime time for attack; she knew, for she had often initiated
raids around change of watch. Those just going off watch were often tired
and already thinking of other things, considering watch the duty of the next
guard. Those just coming on watch were often not mentally prepared for a
sudden attack. People tended to think that the enemy would not come until
they were properly settled in and on the lookout. Victory favored those who
were ready. Defeat stalked those who were unwary.
Kahlan made her way to a formation of rock not far from Richard. She
scooted back, sitting atop a high spot in order to get a better view of the
lifeless surroundings. Even in the middle of the night, the rough rock still
radiated the fierce heat of the previous day.
Kahlan pulled a skein of damp hair away from her neck, wishing there
were a breeze. There had been times, in winter, when she had nearly frozen
to death. Try as she might, she couldn't seem to recall what it felt like to
be truly cold.
It wasn't long after Kahlan had gotten herself situated before she saw
Jennsen get up and step quietly through their camp, trying not to wake the
others.
"All right if I sit with you?" she asked when she finally reached
Kahlan.
"Of course."
Jennsen pushed her bottom back up onto the rock beside Kahlan, pulled
her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them, hugging them close to her
body. For a time she just gazed out at the night.
"Kahlan, I'm sorry--about before." Despite the dark, Kahlan thought she
could see that the young woman looked miserable. "I didn't mean to sound
like a fool who would do something without thinking. I'd never do anything
to hurt any of you."
"I know you wouldn't deliberately do any such thing. It's the things
you might do unwittingly that concern me."
Jennsen nodded. "I think I understand a little better, now, about how
complicated everything is and how much I really don't know. I'll not do
anything unless you or Richard tells me to, I promise."
Kahlan smiled and ran a hand down the back of Jennsen's head, letting
it come to rest on her shoulder. "I only told you those things because I
care about you, Jennsen." She gave the shoulder a compassionate squeeze. "I
guess I'm worried for you the same way Betty worries for her innocent twins,
knowing the dangers all around when they rarely do.
"You need to understand that if you go out on thin ice, it doesn't
matter if the lake was frozen over by a cold spell, or a magic spell. If you
don't know where you're stepping, so to speak, you could fall into the cold
dark arms of death. It matters not what made the ice--dead is dead. My point
is that you don't go out on that thin ice unless you have a very powerful
need, because it very well could cost you your life."
"But I'm not touched by magic. Like Richard said, I'm like someone born
without eyes who can't see color. I'm a broken link in the chain of magic.
Wouldn't that mean that I can't accidentally get into trouble with it?"
"And if someone pushes a boulder off a cliff and it crushes you, does
it matter if that boulder was sent crashing over the edge by a man with a
lever, or by a sorceress wielding the gift?"
Jennsen's voice took on a troubled tone. "I see what you mean. I guess
that I never looked at it that way."
"I'm only trying to help you because I know how easy it is to make a
mistake."
She watched Kahlan in the dark for a moment. "You know about magic.
What kind of mistake could you make?"
"All kinds."
"Like what?"
Kahlan stared off into the memories. "I once delayed for half a second
in killing someone."
"But I thought you said that it was wrong to be too rash."
"Sometimes the most foolhardy thing you can do is to delay. She Was a
sorceress. By the time I acted it was already too late. Because of my
mistake she captured Richard and took him away. For a year, I didn't know
what had happened to him. I thought I would never see him again, that I
would die of heartache."
Jennsen stared in astonishment. "When did you find him again?"
"Not long ago. That's why we're down here in the Old World--she brought
him here. At least I found him. I've made other mistakes, and they, too,
have resulted in no end of trouble. So has Richard. Like he said, we all
make mistakes. If I can, I want to spare you from making a needless mistake,
at least."
Jennsen looked away. "Like believing in that man I was with
yesterday--Sebastian. Because of him, my mother was murdered and I almost
got you killed. I feel like such a fool."
"You didn't make that mistake out of carelessness, Jennsen. They
deceived you, used you. More importantly, in the end you used your head and
were willing to face the truth."
Jennsen nodded.
"What should we name the twins?" she finally asked.
Kahlan didn't think that naming the twins was a good idea, not yet
anyway, but she was reluctant to say it.
"I don't know. What names were you thinking?"
Jennsen let out a heavy breath. "It was a shock to suddenly have Betty
back with me, and even more of a surprise to see that she had babies of her
own. I never considered that before. I haven't even had time to think about
names."
"You will."
Jennsen smiled at the thought. Her smile grew, as if at the thought of
something more.
"You know," she said, "I think I understand what Richard meant about
thinking of his grandfather as wizardly, even though he never saw him do
magic."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I can't see magic, so to speak, and Richard didn't do any
tonight--at least none I know of." She laughed softly, as pleasing a laugh
as Kahlan had ever heard, full of life and joy. It had a quality to it much
like Richard's, the feminine balance to Richard's masculine laugh, two
facets of the same delight.
"And yet," Jennsen went on, "the things he said made me think of him in
that way--wizardly--like he said about Zedd. When he was saying that, I knew
just what he meant, just how he'd felt, because Richard has opened up the
world for me, but the gift wasn't the magic he showed me. It was him showing
me life, that my life is mine, and worth living."
Kahlan smiled to herself, at how very much that described her own
feeling of what Richard had done for her, how he had brought her to cherish
life and believe in it not just for others, but, most importantly, for
herself.
For a time they sat together, silently watching the empty wasteland.
Kahlan kept an eye on Richard as he tossed in his sleep.
With growing concern, Jennsen, too, watched Richard. "It looks like
there's something wrong with him," she whispered as she leaned close.
"He's having a nightmare."
Kahlan watched, as she had so many times before, as Richard made fists
in his sleep, as he struggled silently against some private terror.
"It's scary to see him like that," Jennsen said. "He seems so
different. When he's awake he always seems so ... reasoned."
"You can't reason with a nightmare," Kahlan said in quiet sorrow.
Richard woke with a start."
They were back.
He had been having a bad dream. Like all of his dreams, he didn't
remember it. He only knew it was a bad dream because it left behind the
shapeless feeling of breathless, heart-pounding, undefined, frantic terror.
He threw off the lingering pall of the nightmare as he would throw off a
tangled blanket. Even though it felt as if the dark things in lingering
remnants of the dream were still clawing at him, trying to drag him back
into their world, he knew that dreams were immaterial, and so he dismissed
it. Now that he was awake, the feeling of dread rapidly began to dissolve,
like fog burning off under hot sunlight.
Still, he had to make an effort to slow his breathing.
What was important was that they were back. He didn't always know when
they returned, but this time, for some reason, he was sure of it.
Sometime in the night, too, the wind had come up. It buffeted him,
pulling at his clothes, tearing at his hair. Out on the sweltering waste,
the scorching gusts offered no relief from the heat. Rather than being
refreshing, the wind was so hot that it felt as though the door to a blast
furnace had opened and the heat were broiling his flesh.
Groping for his waterskin, he didn't find it immediately at hand. He
tried to recall exactly where he'd laid it, but, with other thoughts
screaming for his attention, he couldn't remember. He would have to worry
about a drink later.
Kahlan lay close, turned toward him. She had gathered her long hair in
a loose fist beneath her chin. The wind whipped stray strands across her
cheek. Richard loved just to sit and look at her face; this time, though, he
delayed but a moment, looking at her only long enough in the faint starlight
to note her even breathing. She was sound asleep.
As he scanned their camp, he could just make out a weak blush in the
eastern sky. Dawn was still some time off.
He realized that he'd slept through his watch. Cara and Kahlan had no
doubt decided that he needed the sleep more than he was needed for standing
a watch and had conspired to not wake him. They were probably right. He had
been so exhausted that he'd slept right through the night. Now, though, he
was wide awake.
His headache, too, was gone.
Silently, carefully, Richard slipped away from Kahlan so as not to wake
her. He instinctively reached for his sword lying at his other side. The
metal was warm beneath his touch as his fingers curled around the familiar
silver-and-gold-wrought scabbard. It was always reassuring to find the sword
at the ready, but even more so at that moment. As he silently rolled to his
feet, he slipped the baldric over his head, placing the familiar supple
leather across his right shoulder. As he rose up, his sword was already at
his hip, ready to do his bidding.
Despite how reassuring it was to have the weapon at his side, after the
carnage back at the place called the Pillars of Creation the thought of
drawing it sickened him. He recoiled from the mental image of the things he
had done. Had he not, though, Kahlan wouldn't be sleeping peacefully; she
would be dead, or worse.
Other good had come of it, too. Jennsen had been pulled back from the
brink. He saw her curled up beside her beloved goat, her arm corralling
Betty's two sleeping kids. He smiled at seeing her, at what a wonder it was
to have a sister, smiled at how smart she was and all the wonders of life
she had ahead of her. It made him happy that she was eager to be around him,
but being around him made him worry for her safety, too. There really wasn't
any place safe, though, unless the forces of the Order that had been
unleashed could be defeated, or at least bottled back up.
A heavy gust tore through their camp, raising even thicker clouds of
dirt. Richard blinked, trying to keep the blowing sand out of his eyes. The
sound of the wind in his ears was aggravating because it masked other
sounds. Though he listened carefully, he could hear only the wind.
Squinting against the blowing grit, he saw that Tom was sitting atop
his wagon, looking this way and that, keeping watch. Friedrich was asleep on
the other side of the horses, Cara not far away on the desert side of
Kahlan, putting herself between them and anything that might be out beyond.
In the dim starlight Tom hadn't spotted Richard. When Tom scanned the night
in the opposite direction, Richard moved away from camp, leaving Tom to
watch over the others.
Richard was comfortable in the cloak of darkness. Years of practice had
taught him to slip unseen through shadows, to move silently in the darkness.
He did that now, moving away from camp as he focused on what had awakened
him, on what others standing watch would not sense.
Unlike Tom, the races did not miss Richard's movements. They wheeled
high overhead as they watched him, following him as he made his way out
along the broken ground. They were almost invisible against the dark sky,
but Richard could make them out as they blacked out stars, like telltale
shadows against the sparkling black curtain of night--shadows that he
thought he could feel as well as he could see.
That the crushing headache was gone was a great relief, but that it had
vanished in the manner that it had was also a cause for concern. The torment
often vanished when he was distracted by something important. Something
dangerous. At the same time, even though the pain was gone, it felt as if it
were simply hiding in the shadows of his mind, waiting for him to relax so
that it could pounce.
When the headaches surged through him, the nauseating pain was so
intense that it made him feel sick in every fiber of his being. Even though
the crushing pain at times made it difficult for him to stand, to put one
foot in front of the other, he had known that to remain behind, where they
were, would have meant certain death. While the headaches were bad in and of
themselves, Richard wasn't so much concerned about the pain as he was about
the nature of the headaches--their cause.
They weren't the same as the headaches he'd had before that he so
feared--the headaches brought on by the gift--but they weren't like those he
considered to be normal headaches, either. Throughout his life he'd
occasionally had terrible headaches, the same as his mother used to have on
a more regular basis. She'd called them "my grim headaches." Richard
thoroughly understood her meaning.
These, however grim, were not like those. He worried that they might be
caused by the gift.
He'd had the headaches brought on by the gift before. He had been told
that as he grew older, as his ability grew, as he came to understand more,
he would, at times later in his life, be confronted with headaches brought
on by the gift. The remedy was supposedly simple. He had only to seek the
help of another wizard and have him assist with the necessary next level of
awareness and comprehension of the nature of the gift within himself. That
mental awareness and understanding would enable him to control and thereby
eliminate the pain--to douse the flare-up. At least, that's what he had been
told.
Of course, in the absence of another wizard to help, the Sisters of the
Light would gladly put a collar around his neck to help control the runaway
power of the gift.
He had been told that such headaches, if not properly tended to, were
lethal. This much of it, at least, he knew was true. He couldn't afford to
have that problem now, on top of all his others. Right now there was nothing
he could do about it; there was no one anywhere near who could help him with
that kind of headache--no wizard, and even though he would never allow it,
no Sister of the Light to put him in a collar again.
Richard once more reminded himself that it wasn't the same kind of pain
as the last time, when it had been brought on by the gift. He reminded
himself not to invent trouble he didn't have.
He had enough real trouble.
He heard the whoosh as one of the huge birds shot past low overhead.
The race twisted in flight, lifting on a gust of wind, to peer back at him.
Another followed in its wake, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth.
They slipped silently away, out across the open ground, following one
another roughly in a line. Their wings rocked as they worked to stabilize
themselves in the gusty air. Some distance away, they soared into a gliding,
climbing turn back toward him.
Before they returned, the races tightened their flight into a circle.
When they stroked their huge wings, Richard could usually hear their
feathers whisper through the air, although now, with the sound of the wind,
he couldn't. Their black eyes watched him watching them. He wanted them to
know he was aware of them, that he hadn't slept through their nocturnal
return.
Were he not so concerned about the meaning of the races, he might think
they were beautiful, their sleek black shapes silhouetted majestically
against the crimson flush coming to the sky.
As he watched, though, Richard couldn't imagine what they were doing.
He'd seen this behavior from them before and hadn't understood it then,
either. He realized, suddenly, that those other times when they'd returned
to circle in this curious fashion, he had also been aware of them. He wasn't
always aware of them or aware of when they returned. If he had a headache,
though, it had vanished when they returned.
The hot wind ruffled Richard's hair as he gazed out across wasteland
obscured by the dusty predawn gloom. He didn't like this dead place. Dawn
here would offer no promise of a world coming to life. He wished Kahlan and
he were back in his woods. He couldn't help smiling as he recalled the place
in the mountains where the year before they had spent the summer. The place
was so wondrous that it had even managed to mellow Cara.
In the faint but gathering light, the black-tipped races circled, as
they always did when they performed this curious maneuver, not over him, but
a short distance away, this time out over the open desert where the
buffeting wind unfurled diaphanous curtains of sandy grit. The other times
it had been over forested hills, or open grassland. This time, as he watched
the races, he had to squint to keep the blowing sand from getting in his
eyes.
Abruptly tipping their broad wings, the races tightened their circle as
they descended closer to the desert floor. He knew that they would do this
for a short while before breaking up their formation to resume their normal
flight. They sometimes flew in pairs and performed spectacular aerial
stunts, each gracefully matching the other's every move, as ravens sometimes
did, but otherwise they never flew in anything like the compact group of
their sporadic circling.
And then, as the inky shapes wheeled around in a tight vortex, Richard
realized that the trailers of blowing sand below them weren't simply snaking
and curling aimlessly in the wind, but were flowing over something that
wasn't there.
The hair along his arms stood stiffly up.
Richard blinked, squinting into the wind, trying to see better in the
howling storm of blowing sand. Yet more dust and dirt lifted in the blast of
a heavy gust. As the twisting eddies raced across the flat ground and passed
beneath the races, they swirled around and over something below, making the
shape more distinct.
It appeared to be the form of a person.
The dirt swirled around the empty void, silhouetting it, defining it,
revealing what was there, but not. Whenever the wind lifted and carried with
it a heavy load, the outline of the shape, bounded by the swirling sand,
looked like the outline of a man shrouded in hooded robes.
Richard's right hand found the hilt of his sword.
There was nothing to the shape save the sand that flowed over the
contours of what wasn't there, the way muddy water streaming around a clear
glass bottle revealed its covert contour. The form seemed to be standing
still, watching him.
There were, of course, no eyes in the empty sockets of blowing sand,
but Richard could feel them on him.
"What is it?" Jennsen asked in a worried whisper as she rushed up
beside him. "What's the matter? Do you see something?"
With his left hand, Richard pushed her back, out of his way. So urgent
was his headlong rush of need that it took concentrated effort to be gentle
about it. He was gripping the hilt of his sword so tightly that he could
feel the raised letters of the word TRUTH woven in gold wire through the
silver.
Richard was invoking from within the sword its purpose for being, the
very core of its creation. In answer, the might of the sword's power
ignited.
Beyond the veil of rage, though, in the shadows of his mind, even as
the anger of the sword thundered through him, Richard dimly perceived an
unexpected opposition on the part of the flux of magic to rise to the
summons.
It was like heading out a door and leaning his weight into the howl of
a gale, and stumbling forward a step at unexpectedly finding less resistance
than anticipated.
Before Richard could question the sensation, the wave of wrath flooded
through him, saturating him in the cold fury of the storm that was the
sword's power.
As the races wheeled, their circle began coming closer. This, too, they
had done before, but this time the shape that moved with them was betrayed
by the swirl of sand and grit. It appeared that the intangible hooded man
was being pulled closer by the black-tipped races.
The distinctive ring of steel announced the arrival of the Sword of
Truth in the hot dawn air.
Jennsen squeaked at his sudden movement and jumped back.
The races answered with piercing, mocking cries that carried on the
howling wind.
The unmistakable sound of Richard's sword being drawn brought Kahlan
and Cara at a dead run. Cara would have leapt protectively ahead, but she
knew better than to get in front of him when he had the sword out. Agiel
clenched in her fist, she skidded to a halt off to the side, crouched and at
the ready, a powerful cat ready to spring.
"What is it?" Kahlan asked as she ran up behind him, gaping out at the
pattern in the wind.
"It's the races," came Jennsen's worried voice. "They've come back."
Kahlan stared incredulously at her. "The races don't look like the
worst of it."
Sword in hand, Richard watched the thing below the wheeling races.
Feeling the sword in his grip, its power sizzling through the very marrow of
his bones, he felt a flash of hesitation, of doubt. With no time to waste,
he turned back to Tom, just starting away from securing the lead lines to
his big draft horses. Richard mimed shooting an arrow. Grasping Richard's
meaning, Tom skidded to a halt and spun back to the wagon. Friedrich
urgently seized the tethers to the other horses, working to keep them calm,
keeping them from spooking. Leaning in the wagon, Tom threw gear aside as he
searched for Richard's bow and quiver.
Jennsen peered from one grim face to another. "What do you mean the
races aren't the worst of it?"
Cara pointed with her Agiel. "That... that figure. That man."
Frowning in confusion, Jennsen looked back and forth between Cara and
the blowing sand.
"What do you see?" Richard asked.
Jennsen threw her hands up in a gesture of frustration. "Black-tipped
races. Five of them. That, and the blinding blowing sand is all. Is there
someone out there? Do you see people coming?"
She didn't see it.
Tom pulled the bow and quiver from the wagon and ran for the rest of
them. Two of the races, as if noting Tom running in with the bow, lifted a
wing and circled wider. They swept around him once before disappearing into
the darkness. The other three, though, continued to circle, as if bearing
the floating form in the blowing sand beneath them.
Closer still the races came, and the form with them. Richard couldn't
imagine what it was, but the sense of dread it engendered rivaled any
nightmare. The power from the sword surging through him had no such fear or
doubt. Then why did he? Storms of magic within, beyond anything storming
across the wasteland, spiraled up through him, fighting for release. With
grim effort, Richard contained the need, focused it on the task of doing his
bidding should he choose to release it. He was the master of the sword and
had at all times to consciously exert that mastery. By the sword's reaction
to what the currents of sand revealed, there could be no doubt as to
Richard's conviction of the nature of what stood before him. Then what was
it he sensed from the sword?
From back by the wagon, a horse screamed. A quick glance over his
shoulder revealed Friedrich trying to calm them. All three horses reared
against the rope he held fast. They came down stamping their hooves and
snorting. From the corner of his eye, Richard saw twin streaks of black
shoot in out of the darkness, skimming in just above the ground. Betty let
out a terrible wail.
And then, as quickly as they'd appeared, they were gone, vanished back
into the thick gloom.
"No!" Jennsen cried out as she ran for the animals.
Before them, the unmoving shape watched. Tom reached out, trying to
stop Jennsen on the way past. She tore away from him. For a moment, Richard
worried that Tom might go after her, but then he was again running for
Richard.
Out of the dark swirling murk, the two races suddenly appeared, so
close Richard could see the quills running down through their flight
feathers spread wide in the wind. Swooping in out of the swirling storm of
dust to rejoin the circle, each carried a small, limp, white form in its
powerful talons.
Tom ran up holding the bow out in one hand and the quiver in the other.
Making his choice, Richard slammed his sword into its scabbard and snatched
up the bow.
With one smooth motion he bent the bow and attached the string. He
yanked an arrow from the leather quiver Tom held out in his big fist.
As Richard turned to the target, he already had the arrow nocked and
was drawing back the string. Distantly, it felt good to feel his muscles
straining against the weight, straining against the spring of the bow,
loading its force for release. It felt good to rely on his strength, his
skill, his endless hours of practice, and not have to depend on magic.
The still form of the man who wasn't there seemed to watch. Eddies of
sand sluiced over the shape, marking the outline. Richard glared at the head
of the form beyond the razor-sharp steel tip of the arrow. Like all blades,
it fell comfortingly familiar to Richard. With a blade in his hands, he was
in his element and it mattered not if it was stone dust his blade drew, or
blood. The steel-tipped arrow was squarely centered on the empty spot in the
curve of blowing sand that formed the head.
The piercing cry of races carried above the howl of the wind.
String to his cheek, Richard savored the tension in his muscles, the
weight of the bow, the feathers touching his flesh, the distance between
blade and objective filled with swirling sand, the pull of the wind against
his arm, the bow, and the arrow. Each of those factors and a hundred more
went into an inner calculation that after a lifetime of practice required no
conscious computation yet decided where the point of the arrow belonged once
he called the target.
The form before him stood watching.
Richard abruptly raised the bow and called the target.
The world became not only still but silent for him as the distance
seemed to contract. His body was drawn as taut as the bow, the arrow
becoming a projection of his fluid focused intent, the mark before the arrow
his purpose for being. His conscious intent invoked the instant sum of the
calculation needed to connect arrow and target.
The swirling sand seemed to slow as the races, wings spread wide,
dragged through the thick air. There was no doubt in Richard's mind what the
arrow would find at the end of a journey only just begun. He felt the string
hit his wrist. He saw the feathers clear the bow above his fist. The arrow's
shaft flexed slightly as it sprang away and took flight.
Richard was already drawing the second arrow from the quiver in Tom's
fist as the first found its target. Black feathers exploded in the crimson
dawn. The bird tumbled gracelessly through the air and with a hard thud hit
the ground not far from the shape floating just above the ground. The bloody
white form was free of the talons, but it was too late.
The four remaining races screamed in fury. As the birds pumped their
wings, clawing for height, one railed at Richard with a shrill scream.
Richard called the target.
The second arrow was off.
The arrow ripped right into the race's open throat and out the back of
the head, cutting off the angry cry. The flightless weight plummeted to the
ground.
The form below the remaining three races began to dissolve in the
swirling sand.
The three remaining birds, as if abandoning their charge, wheeled
around, racing toward Richard with angry intent. He calmly considered them
from behind feathers of his own. The third arrow was away. The race in the
center lifted its right wing, trying to change direction, but took the arrow
through its heart. Rolling wing over wing, it spiraled down through the
blowing sand, crashing to the hardpan out ahead of Richard.
The remaining two birds, screeching defiant cries, plunged toward him.
Richard pulled string to cheek, placing the fourth arrow on target. The
range was swiftly closing. The arrow was away in an instant. It tore through
the body of the black-tipped race still clutching in its talons the bloody
corpse of the tiny kid.
Wings raked back, the last angry race dove toward Richard. As soon as
Richard snatched an arrow from the quiver an impatient Tom held out, the big
D'Haran heaved his knife. Before Richard could nock the arrow, the whirling
knife ripped into the raptor. Richard stepped aside as the huge bird shot
past in a lifeless drop and slammed into the ground right behind him. As it
tumbled, blood sprayed across the windswept rock and black-tipped feathers
flew everywhere.
The dawn, only moments ago filled with the the bloodcurdling screams of
the black-tipped races, was suddenly quiet but for the low moan of the wind.
Black feathers lifted in that wind, floating out across the open expanse
beneath a yellow-orange sky.
At that moment, the sun broke the horizon, throwing long shadows out
over the wasteland.
Jennsen clutched one of the limp white twins to her breast. Betty,
bleating plaintively, blood running from a gash on her side, stood on her
hind legs trying to arouse her still kid in Jennsen's arms. Jennsen bent to
the other twin sprawled on the ground and laid her lifeless charge beside
it. Betty urgently licked at the bloody carcasses. Jennsen hugged Betty's
neck a moment before trying to pull the goat away. Betty dug in her hooves,
not wanting to leave her stricken kids. Jennsen could do no more than to
offer her friend consoling words choked with tears.
When she stood, unable to turn Betty from her dead offspring, Richard
sheltered Jennsen under his arm.
"Why would the races suddenly do that?"
"I don't know," Richard said. "You didn't see anything other than the
races, then?"
Jennsen leaned against Richard, holding her face in her hands, giving
in briefly to the tears. "I just saw the birds," she said as she used the
back of her sleeve to wipe her cheeks.
"What about the shape defined by the blowing sand?" Kahlan asked as she
placed a comforting hand on Jennsen's shoulder.
"Shape?" She looked from Kahlan to Richard. "What shape?"
"It looked like a man's shape." Kahlan drew the curves of an outline in
the air before her with both hands. "Like the outline of a man wearing a
hooded cape."
"I didn't see anything but black-tipped races and the clouds of blowing
sand."
"And you didn't see the sand blowing around anything?" Richard asked.
"You didn't see any shape defined by the sand?"
Jennsen shook her head insistently before returning to Betty's side.
"If the shape involved magic," Kahlan said in a confidential tone to
Richard, "she wouldn't see that, but why wouldn't she see the sand?"
"To her, the magic wasn't there."
"But the sand was."
"The color is there on a painting but a blind person can't see it, nor
can they see the shapes that the brush strokes, laden with color, help
define." He shook his head in wonder as he watched Jennsen. "We don't really
know to what degree someone is affected by other things when they can't
perceive the magic that interacts with those other things. For all we know,
it could be that her mind simply fails to recognize the pattern caused by
magic and just reads it as blowing sand. It could even be that because there
is a pattern to the magic, only we can see those particles of sand directly
involved with defining the pattern, while she sees them all and therefore
the subordinate pattern is lost to her eyes.
"It could even be that it's something like the boundaries were; two
worlds existing in the same place at the same time. Jennsen and we could be
looking at the same thing, and see it through different eyes-- through
different worlds." Kahlan nodded as Richard bent to one knee beside Jennsen
to inspect
the gash through the goat's wiry brown hair.
"We'd better stitch this," he told Jennsen. "It's not life-threatening,
but it needs attention."
Jennsen snuffled back her tears as Richard stood. "It was magic,
then--the thing you saw?"
Richard stared off toward where the form had appeared in the blowing
sand. "Something evil."
Off behind them, Rusty tossed her head and whinnied in sympathy with
inconsolable Betty. When Tom laid a sorrowful hand on Jennsen's shoulder,
she seized it as if for strength and held it to her cheek.
Jennsen finally stood, shielding her eyes against the blowing dust as
she looked to the horizon. "At least we're rid of the filthy races."
"Not for long," Richard said.
His headache came slamming back with such force that it nearly took him
from his feet. He had learned a great deal about controlling pain, about how
to disregard it. He did that now.
There were bigger worries.
Around midafternoon, as they were walking across the scorching desert,
Kahlan noticed Richard carefully watching his shadow stretched out before
him.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter?"
He gestured at the shadow before him. "Races. Ten or twelve. They just
glided up behind us. They're hiding in the sun."
"Hiding in the sun?"
"They're flying high and in the spot where their shadow falls on us. If
we were to look up in the sky we wouldn't be able to see them because we'd
have to look right into the sun."
Kahlan turned and, with her hand shielding her eyes, tried to see for
herself, but it was too painful to try to look up anywhere near the
merciless sun. When she looked back, Richard, who hadn't turned to look with
her, again flicked his hand toward the shadows.
"If you look carefully at the ground around your shadow, you can just
make out the distortion in the light. It's them."
Kahlan might have thought that Richard was having a little fun with her
were it not about a matter as serious as the races. She searched the ground
around their shadows until she finally saw what he was talking about. At
such a distance, the races' shadows were little more than shifting
irregularities in the light.
Kahlan glanced back at the wagon. Tom was driving, with Friedrich
sitting up on the seat beside him. Richard and Kahlan were giving the horses
a rest from being ridden, so they were tethered to the wagon.
Jennsen sat on blankets in the back of the wagon, comforting Betty as
she bleated in misery. Kahlan didn't think the goat had been silent for more
than a minute or two all day. The gash wasn't bad; Betty's suffering was
from other pain. At least the poor goat had Jennsen for solace.
From what Kahlan had learned, Jennsen had had Betty for half her life.
Moving around as she and her mother had, running from Darken Rahl, hiding,
staying away from people so as not to reveal themselves and risk word
drifting back to Darken Rahl's ears, Jennsen had never had a chance to have
childhood friends. Her mother had gotten her the goat as a companion. In her
constant effort to keep Jennsen out of the hands of a monster, it was the
best she could offer.
Kahlan wiped the stinging sweat from her eyes. She took in the four
black feathers Richard had bundled together and strung on his upper right
arm. He had taken the feathers when he'd retrieved the arrows that were
still good. Richard had given the last feather to Tom for killing the fifth
race with his knife. Tom wore his single feather like Richard, on his arm.
Tom thought of it as a trophy, of sorts, awarded by the Lord Rahl.
Kahlan knew that Richard wore his four feathers for a different reason:
it was a warning for all to see.
Kahlan pulled her hair back over her shoulder. "Do you think that was a
man below the races? A man watching us?"
Richard shrugged. "You know more about magic than me. You tell me."
"I've never seen anything like it." She frowned over at him. "If it was
a man... or something like that, why do you think he finally decided to
reveal himself?"
"I don't think he did decide to reveal himself." Richard's intent gray
eyes turned toward her. "I think it was an accident."
"How could it be an accident?"
"If it's someone using the races to track us, and he can somehow see
us--"
"See us how?"
"I don't know. See us through the eyes of the races."
"You can't do that with magic."
Richard fixed her with a trenchant look. "Fine. Then what was it?"
Kahlan looked back at the shadows stretching out before them on the
buckskin-colored rock, back at the small bleary shapes moving around the
shadow of her head, like flies around a corpse. "I don't know. You were
saying? .. . About someone using the races to track us, to see us?"
"I think," Richard said, "that someone is watching us, through the
races or with their aid--or something like that--and they can't really see
everything. They can't see clearly."
"So?"
"So, since he can't see with clarity, I think maybe he didn't realize
that there was a sandstorm. He didn't anticipate what the blowing sand would
reveal. I don't think he intended to give himself away." Richard looked over
at her again. "I think he made a mistake. I think he showed himself
accidentally."
Kahlan let out a measured, exasperated breath. She had no argument for
such a preposterous notion. It was no wonder he hadn't told her the full
extent of his theory. She had been thinking, when he said the races were
tracking them, that probably a web had been cast and then some event had
triggered it--most likely Cara's innocent touch--and that spell had then
attached to them, causing the races to follow that marker of magic. Then, as
Jennsen had suggested, someone was simply watching where the races were in
order to get a pretty good idea of where Richard and Kahlan were. Kahlan had
thought of it in terms of the way Darken Rahl had once hooked a tracer cloud
to Richard in order to know where they were. Richard wasn't thinking in
terms of what had happened before; he was looking at it through the prism of
a Seeker.
There were still a number of things about Richard's notion that didn't
make sense to her, but she knew better than to discount what he thought
simply because she had never heard of such a thing before.
"Maybe it's not a 'he,' " she finally said. "Maybe it's a she. Maybe a
Sister of the Dark."
Richard gave her another look, but this one was more worry than
anything else. "Whoever it is--whatever it is--I don't think it can be
anything good."
Kahlan couldn't argue that much of it, but still, she couldn't
reconcile such a notion. "Well, let's say it's like you think it is--that we
spotted him spying on us, by accident. Why did the races then attack us?"
Dust rose from Richard's boot as he casually kicked a small stone. "I
don't know. Maybe he was just angry that he'd given himself away."
"He was angry, so he had the races kill Betty's kids? And attack you?"
Richard shrugged. "I'm just guessing because you asked; I'm not saying
I think it's so." The long feathers, bloodred at their base, turning to a
dark gray and then to inky black at the tip, ruffled in the gusts of wind.
As he thought it over, his tone turned more speculative. "It could even
be that whoever it was using the races to watch us had nothing at all to do
with the attack. Maybe the races decided to attack on their own."
"They simply took the reins from whoever it was that was taking them
for the ride?"
"Maybe. Maybe he can send them to us so he can have a peek at where we
are, where we're going, but can't control them much more than that."
In frustration, Kahlan let out a sigh. "Richard," she said, unable to
hold back her doubts, "I know a good deal about all sorts of magic and I've
never heard of anything like this being possible."
Richard leaned close, again taking her in with those arresting gray
eyes of his. "You know about all sorts of things magic from the Midlands.
Maybe down here they have something you never encountered before. After all,
had you ever heard of a dream walker before we encountered Jagang? Or even
thought such a thing was possible?"
Kahlan pulled her lower lip through her teeth as she studied his grim
expression for a long moment. Richard hadn't grown up around magic--it was
all new to him. In some ways, though, that was a strength, because he didn't
have preconceived notions about what was possible and what wasn't.
Sometimes, the things they'd encountered were unprecedented.
To Richard, just about all magic was unprecedented.
"So, what do you think we should do?" she finally asked in a
confidential tone.
"What we planned." He glanced over his shoulder to see Cara scouting a
goodly distance off to their left side. "It has to be connected to the rest
of it."
"Cara only meant to protect us."
"I know. And who knows, maybe it would have been worse if she hadn't
touched it. It could even be that by doing what she did, she actually bought
us time."
Kahlan swallowed at the feeling of dread churning in her. "Do you think
we still have enough time?"
"We'll think of something. We don't even know yet for sure what it
could mean."
"When the sand finally runs out of an hourglass, it usually means the
goose is cooked."
"We'll find an answer."
"Promise?"
Richard reached over and gently caressed the back of her neck.
"Promise."
Kahlan loved his smile, the way it sparkled in his eyes. Somewhere in
the back of her mind she knew that he always kept his promises. His eyes
held something else, though, and that distracted her from asking if he
believed the answer he promised would come in time, or even if it would be
an answer that could help them.
"You have a headache, don't you," she said.
"Yes." His smile had vanished. "It's different than before, but I'm
pretty sure it's caused by the same thing."
The gift. That's what he meant.
"What do you mean it's different? And if it's different, then what
makes you think the cause is the same?"
He thought about it a moment. "Remember when I was explaining to
Jennsen about how the gift needs to be balanced, how I have to balance the
fighting I do by not eating meat?" When she nodded he went on. "It got worse
right then."
"Headaches, even those kind, vary."
"No ..." he said, frowning as he tried to find the words. "No, it was
almost as if talking about--thinking about--the need not to eat meat in
order to balance the gift somehow brought it more to the fore and made the
headaches worse."
Kahlan didn't at all like that concept. "You mean like maybe the gift
within you that is the cause of the headaches is trying to impress upon you
the importance of balance in what you do with the gift."
Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. "I don't know. There's
more to it. I just can't seem to get it all worked out. Sometimes when I
try, when I go down that line of reasoning, about how I need to balance the
fighting I do, the pain starts to get so bad I can't dwell on it.
"And something else," he added. "There might be a problem with my
connection to the magic of the sword."
"What? How can that be?"
"I don't know."
Kahlan tried to keep the alarm out of her voice. "Are you sure?"
He shook his head in frustration. "No, I'm not sure. It just seemed
different when I felt the need of it and drew the sword this morning. It was
as if the sword's magic was reluctant to rise to the need."
Kahlan thought it over a moment. "Maybe that means that the headaches
are something different, this time. Maybe they aren't really caused by the
gift."
"Even if some of it is different, I still think its cause is the gift,"
he said. "One thing they do have in common with the last time is that
they're gradually getting worse."
"What do you want to do?"
He lifted his arms out to the sides and let them fall back. "For now,
we don't have much of a choice--we have to do what we planned."
"We could go to Zedd. If it is the gift, as you think, then Zedd would
know what to do. He could help you."
"Kahlan, do you honestly believe that we have any chance in Creation of
making it all the way to Aydindril in time? Even if it weren't for the rest
of it, if the headaches are from the gift, I'd be dead weeks before we could
travel all the way to Aydindril. And that's not even taking into account how
difficult it's bound to be getting past Jagang's army all throughout the
Midlands and especially the troops around Ay-dindril."
"Maybe he's not there now."
Richard kicked at another stone in the path. "You think Jagang is just
going to leave the Wizard's Keep and all it contains--leave it all for us to
use against him?"
Zedd was First Wizard. For someone of his ability, defending the
Wizard's Keep wouldn't be too difficult. He also had Adie there with him to
help. The old sorceress, alone, could probably defend a place such as the
Keep. Zedd knew what the Keep would mean to Jagang, could he gain it. Zedd
would protect the Keep no matter what.
"There's no way for Jagang to get past the barriers in that place,"
Kahlan said. That much of it was one worry they could set aside. "Jagang
knows that and might not waste time holding an army there for nothing."
"You may be right, but that still doesn't do us any good--it's too
far."
Too far. Kahlan seized Richard's arm and dragged him to a halt. "The
sliph. If we can find one of her wells, we could travel in the sliph. If
nothing else, we know there's the well down here in the Old World-- in
Tanimura. Even that's a lot closer than a journey overland all the way to
Aydindril."
Richard looked north. "That might work. We wouldn't have to make it
past Jagang's army. We could come right up inside the Keep." He put his arm
around her shoulders. "First, though, we have to see to this other
business."
Kahlan grinned. "All right. We take care of me first, then we see to
taking care of you."
She felt a heady sense of relief that there was a solution at hand. The
rest of them couldn't travel in the sliph--they didn't have the required
magic--but Richard, Kahlan, and Cara certainly could. They could come up
right in the Keep itself.
The Keep was immense, and thousands of years old. Kahlan had spent much
of her life there, but she had seen only a fraction of the place. Even Zedd
hadn't seen it all, because of some of the shields that had been placed
there ages ago by those with both sides of the gift, and Zedd had only the
Additive side. Rare and dangerous items of magic had been stored there for
eons, along with records and countless books. By now it was possible that
Zedd and Adie had found something in the Keep that would help drive the
Imperial Order back to the Old World.
Not only would going to the Keep be a way to solve Richard's problem
with the gift, but it might provide them with something they needed to swing
the tide of the war back to their side.
Suddenly, seeing Zedd, Aydindril, and the Keep seemed only a short time
away.
With a renewed sense of optimism, Kahlan squeezed Richard's hand. She
knew that he wanted to keep scouting ahead. "I'm going to go back and see
how Jennsen is doing."
As Richard moved on and Kahlan slowed, letting the wagon catch up with
her, another dozen black-tipped races drifted in on the air currents high
above the burning plain. They stayed close to the sun, and well out of range
of Richard's arrows, but they stayed within sight.
Tom handed a waterskin down to Kahlan when the bouncing wagon rattled
up beside her. She was so dry that she gulped the hot water without caring
how bad it tasted. As she let the wagon roll past, she put a boot in the
iron rung and boosted herself up and over the side.
Jennsen looked to be happy for the company as Kahlan climbed in. Kahlan
returned the smile before sitting beside Richard's sister and the puling
Betty.
"How is she?" Kahlan asked, gently stroking Betty's floppy ears.
Jennsen shook her head. "I've never seen her like this. It's breaking
my heart. It reminds me of how hard it was for me when I lost my mother.
It's breaking my heart."
As she sat back on her heels, Kahlan squeezed Jennsen's hand
sympathetically. "I know it's hard, but it's easier for an animal to get
over something like this than for people to do the same. Don't compare it to
you and your mother. Sad as this is, it's different. Betty can have more
kids and she'll forget all about this. You or I never could."
Before the words were out, Kahlan felt a sudden stab of pain for the
unborn child she had lost. How could she ever get over losing her and
Richard's child? Even if she ever had others, she would never be able to
forget what was lost at the hands of brutes.
She idly turned the small dark stone on the necklace she wore,
wondering if she ever would have a child, wondering if there would ever be a
world safe for a child of theirs.
"Are you all right?"
Kahlan realized that Jennsen was watching her face.
Kahlan forced herself to put on a smile. "I'm just sad for Betty."
Jennsen ran a tender hand over the top of Betty's head. "Me too."
"But I know that she'll be all right."
Kahlan watched the endless expanse of ground slowly slide by to either
side of the wagon. Waves of heat made the horizon liquid, with detached
pools of ground floating up into the sky. Still, they saw nothing growing.
The land was slowly rising, though, as they came ever closer to distant
mountains. She knew that it was only a matter of time until they reached
life again, but right then it felt like they never would.
"I don't understand about something," Jennsen said. "You told me how I
shouldn't do anything rash, when it came to magic, unless I was sure of what
would happen. You said it was dangerous. You said not to act in matters of
magic until you can be sure of the consequence."
Kahlan knew what Jennsen was driving at. "That's right."
"Well, that back there pretty much seemed like one of those stabs in
the dark you warned me about."
"I also told you that sometimes you had no choice but to act
immediately. That's what Richard did. I know him. He used his best
judgment."
Jennsen looked to be satisfied. "I'm not suggesting that he was wrong.
I'm just saying that I don't understand. It seemed pretty reckless to me.
How am I supposed to know what you mean when you tell me not to do anything
reckless if it involves magic?"
Kahlan smiled. "Welcome to life with Richard. Half the time I don't
know what's in his head. I've often thought he was acting recklessly and it
turned out to be the right thing, the only thing, he could have done. That's
part of the reason he was named Seeker. I'm sure he took into account things
he sensed that even I couldn't."
"But how does he know those things? How can he know what to do?"
"Oftentimes he's just as confused as you, or even me. But he's
different, too, and he's sure when we wouldn't be."
"Different?"
Kahlan looked over at the young woman, at her red hair shining in the
afternoon sunlight. "He was born with both sides of the gift. All those born
with the gift in the last three thousand years have been born with Additive
Magic only. Some, like Darken Rahl and the Sisters of the Dark, have been
able to use Subtractive Magic, but only through the Keeper's help--not on
their own. Richard alone has been born with Subtractive Magic."
"That's what you mentioned last night, but I don't know anything about
magic, so I don't know what that means."
"We're not exactly sure of everything it means ourselves. Additive
Magic uses what is there, and adds to it, or changes it somehow. The magic
of the Sword of Truth, for example, uses anger, and adds to it, takes power
from it, adds to it until it's something else. With Additive, for example,
the gifted can heal.
"Subtractive Magic is the undoing of things. It can take things and
make them nothing. According to Zedd, Subtractive Magic is the counter to
Additive, as night is to day. Yet it is all part of the same thing.
"Commanding Subtractive, as Darken Rahl did, is one thing, but to be
born with it is quite another.
"Long ago, unlike now, being born with the gift--both sides of the
gift--was common. The great war then resulted in a barrier sealing the New
World off from the Old. That's kept the peace all this time, but things have
changed since then. After that time, not only have those born with the gift
gradually become exceedingly rare, but those who have been born with the
gift haven't been born with the Subtractive side of it.
"Richard was born of two lines of wizards, Darken Rahl and his
grandfather Zedd. He's also the first in thousands of years to be born with
both sides of the gift.
"All of our abilities contribute to how we're able to react to
situations. We don't know how having both sides contributes to Richard's
ability to read a situation and do what's necessary. I suspect he may be
guided by his gift, perhaps more than he believes."
Jennsen let out a troubled sigh. "After all this time, how did this
barrier come to be down, anyway?"
"Richard destroyed it."
Jennsen looked up in astonishment. "Then it's true. Sebastian told me
that the Lord Rahl--Richard--had brought the barrier down. Sebastian said it
was so that Richard could invade and conquer the Old World."
Kahlan smiled at such a grandiose lie. "You don't believe that part of
it, do you?"
"No, not now."
"Now that the barrier is down, the Imperial Order is flooding up into
the New World, destroying or enslaving everything before them."
"Where can people live that's safe? Where can we?"
"Until they're stopped or driven back, there is no safe place to live."
Jennsen thought it over a moment. "If the barrier coming down let the
Imperial Order flood in to conquer the New World, why would Richard have
destroyed it?"
With one hand, Kahlan held on to the side of the wagon as it rocked
over a rough patch of ground. She stared ahead, watching Richard walking
through the glaring light of the wasteland.
"Because of me," Kahlan said in a quiet voice. "One of those mistakes I
told you about." She let out a tired sigh. "One of those stabs in the dark."
Richard squatted down, resting his forearms across his thighs as he
studied the curious patch of rock. His head was pounding with pain; he was
doing his best to ignore it. The headache had come and gone seemingly
without reason. At times he had begun to think that it just might be the
heat after all, and not the gift.
As he considered the signs on the ground, he forgot about his headache.
Something about the rock seemed familiar. Not simply familiar, but
unsettlingly familiar.
Hooves partially covered by long wisps of wiry brown hair came to an
expectant halt beside him. With the top of her head, Betty gently butted his
shoulder, hoping for a snack, or at least a scratch.
Richard looked up at the goat's intent, floppy-eared expression. As
Betty watched him watching her, her tail went into a blur of wagging.
Richard smiled and scratched behind her ears. Betty bleated her pleasure at
the scratch, but it sounded to him like she would have preferred a snack.
After not eating for two days as she lay in misery in the wagon, the
goat seemed to come back to life and begin to recover from the loss of her
two kids. Along with her appetite, Betty's curiosity had returned. She
especially enjoyed scouting with Richard, when he would let hercome along.
It made Jennsen laugh to watch the goat trotting after him like a puppy.
Maybe what really made her laugh was that Betty was getting back to her old
self.
In recent days the land had changed, too. They had begun to see the
return of life. At first, it had simply been the rusty discoloration of
lichen growing on the fragmented rock. Soon after, they spotted a small
thorny bush growing in a low place. Now the rugged plants grew at widely
spaced intervals, dotting the landscape. Betty appreciated the tough bushes,
dining on them as if they were the finest salad greens. On occasion the
horses sampled the brush, then turned away, never finding it to their
liking.
Lichen that had begun to grow on the rock appeared as crusty splotches
streaked with color. In some places it was dark, thick, and leathery, while
in other spots it was no more than what almost appeared to be a coat of thin
green paint. The greenish discoloration filled cracks and crevasses and
coated the underside of stones where the sun didn't bleach it out. Rocks
sticking partway out of the crumbly ground could be pulled up to reveal thin
tendrils of dark brown subterranean fungal growth.
Tiny insects with long feelers skittered from rock to rock or hid in
holes in the scattering of rocks lying about on the ground that looked as if
they had once been boiling and bubbling, and had suddenly turned to stone,
leaving the bubbles forever set in place. An occasional glossy green beetle,
bearing wide pincer jaws, waddled through the sand. Small red ants stacked
steep ruddy mounds of dirt around their holes. There were cottony webs of
spiders in the crotches of the isolated, small, spindly brush growing
sporadically across the ever rising plain. Slender light green lizards sat
on rocks basking in the sun, watching the people pass. If they came too
close, the little creatures, lightning quick, darted for cover.
The signs of life Richard had so far seen were still a long way from
being anything substantial enough to support people, but it was at least a
relief to once again feel like he was rejoining the world of the living. He
knew, too, that up beyond the first wall of mountains they would at last
encounter life in abundance. He also knew that there they would again begin
to encounter people.
Birds, as well, were just beginning to become a common sight. Most were
small--strawberry-colored finches, ash-colored gnatcatchers, rock wrens and
black-throated sparrows. In the distance Richard saw single birds winging
through the blue sky, while sparrows congregated in small skittish flocks.
Here and there, birds lit on the scraggly brush, flitting about looking for
seeds and bugs. The birds disappeared instantly whenever the races glided
into sight.
Staring at the expanse of rock and open ground before him, Richard rose
up, startled, as the reason it looked unsettlingly familiar came to him. At
the same time as the realization came to him, his headache vanished.
Off to his right, Richard saw Kahlan, with Cara at her side, making
their way out to where Richard stood staring down at the astonishing stretch
of rock. The wagon, with Tom, Friedrich, and Jennsen, rumbled on in the
distance to the south. The dust raised by the wagon and horses hung in the
dead air and could be seen for miles. Richard supposed that with the races
periodically paying them a visit, the telltale of the dust didn't much
matter. Still, he would be glad when they reached ground where they could at
least have a chance to try to remain a little more inconspicuous.
"Find anything interesting?" Kahlan asked as she wiped her sleeve
across her forehead.
Richard cast a few small pebbles down at the stretch of rock he'd been
studying. "Tell me what you think of that."
"I think you look like you feel better," Kahlan said.
Her eyes on his, she gave him her special smile, the smile she gave no
one but him. He couldn't help grinning.
Cara, ignoring the smiles that passed between Richard and Kahlan,
leaned in for a gander. "I think Lord Rahl has been looking at too many
rocks. This is more rock, just like all the rest."
"Is it?" Richard asked. He gestured at the area he'd been scrutinizing
and then pointed at another place by where Kahlan and Cara stood. "Is it the
same as that?"
Cara peered at both areas briefly before she folded her arms. "The rock
over there that you've been looking at is just a paler brown, that's all."
Kahlan shrugged. "I think she's right, Richard. It looks like the same
kind of rock, maybe just a little more of a tan color." She thought it over
a moment as she scanned the ground, then added to her assessment. "I guess
it looks more like the rock we've been walking across for days until we
started encountering a little bit of grass and brush."
Richard put his hands on his hips as he stared back at the remarkable
stretch of rock he'd found. "Tell me, then, what characterized the rock in
the place where we were before--a few days ago, back closer to the Pillars
of Creation?"
Kahlan looked over at an expressionless Cara and then frowned at
Richard. "Characterized it? Nothing. It was a dead place. Nothing grew
there."
Richard waved his hand around, indicating the land through which they
were now traveling. "And this?"
"Now things are growing," Cara said, becoming increasingly
disinterested in his study of flora and fauna.
Richard held a hand out. "And there?"
"Nothing is growing there, yet," Cara said in an exasperated sigh.
"There are a lot of spots around where nothing is growing yet. It's still a
wasteland. Just have patience, Lord Rahl, and we will soon enough be back
among the fields and forests."
Kahlan wasn't paying attention to what Cara was saying; she was
frowning as she leaned closer.
"The place where things begin to grow seems to start all at once,"
Kahlan said, almost to herself. "Isn't that curious."
"I certainly think so," Richard said.
"I think Lord Rahl needs to drink more water," Cara sniped.
Richard smiled. "Here. Stand over here," he told her. "Stand over by me
and look again."
Cara, her curiosity aroused, did as he asked. She looked down at the
ground, and then frowned at the places where things grew.
"The Mother Confessor is right." Cara's voice had taken on a decidedly
businesslike tone. "Do you think it's important? Or somehow a danger?"
"Yes--to the first, anyway," Richard said.
He squatted down beside Kahlan. "Now, look at this."
As Kahlan and Cara knelt down beside him, leaning forward, looking
closely at the rock, Richard had to push a curious Betty back out of the
way. He then pointed out a patch of yellow-streaked lichen.
"Look here," he said. "See this medallion of lichen? It's lopsided.
This side is round, but this side, near where nothing grows, is flatter."
Kahlan looked up at him. "Lichen grows on rocks in all kinds of
shapes."
"Yes, but look at how the rock over where there is lichen and brush
growing is spotted all over with little bits of growth. Here, beyond the
stunted side of the lichen, there is nearly nothing. The rock almost looks
scoured clean.
"If you look closely there are a few tiny things, things that have
started to grow only in the last couple of years, but they have yet to
really begin to take hold."
"Yes," Kahlan said in a cautious drawl, "it is odd, but I'm not sure
what you're getting at."
"Look at where things are growing, and where they aren't."
"Well, yes, on that side there's nothing growing, and over here there
is."
"Don't just look down." Richard lifted her chin. "Look out at the
boundary between the two--look at the whole pattern."
Kahlan frowned off into the distance. All of a sudden, the color
drained from her face.
"Dear spirits ..." she whispered.
Richard smiled that she finally saw what he was talking about.
"What are you two mooning over?" Cara complained.
Richard put his hand behind Cara's neck and pulled her head in to look
at what he and Kahlan were seeing.
"That's odd," she said, squinting off into the distance. "The place
where things are growing seem to stop in a comparatively clean line-- like
someone had made an invisible fence running east."
"Right," Richard said as he got up, brushing his hands clean.
"Now, come on." He started walking north. Kahlan and Cara scrambled to
their feet and followed behind as he marched across the lifeless rock. Betty
bleated and trotted after them.
"Where are we going?" Cara asked as she caught up with him
"Just come on," Richard told her.
For half an hour they followed his brisk pace as he headed in a
straight line to the north, across rocky ground and gravelly patches where
nothing at all grew. The day was sweltering, but Richard almost didn't
notice the heat, so focused was he on the lifeless expanse they were
crossing. He hadn't yet gone to see what lay at the other side, but he was
convinced of what they would find once they reached it.
The other two were sweating profusely as they chased behind him. Betty
bleated occasionally as she brought up the rear.
When they finally reached the place he was looking for, the place where
lichen and scraggly brush once again began to appear, he brought them to a
halt. Betty poked her head between Kahlan and Cara for a look.
"Now, look at this," Richard said. "See what I mean?"
Kahlan was breathing hard from the brisk walk in the heat. She pulled
her waterskin off her shoulder and gulped water. She passed the waterskin to
Richard. He watched Cara study the patch of ground as he drank.
"The growing things start again over here," Cara said. She absently
scratched behind Betty's ears when the goat rubbed the top of her head
impatiently against Cara's thigh. "They start to appear in the same kind of
line as the other side, back there, where we were."
"Right," Richard said, handing Cara the waterskin. "Now, follow me."
Cara threw up her arms. "We just came from that way!"
"Come on," Richard called back over his shoulder.
He headed south again, back toward the center of the lifeless patch of
rock, the small group in tow. Betty bleated her displeasure at the pace of
the hot dusty excursion. If Kahlan or Cara shared Betty's opinion, they
didn't voice the complaint.
When Richard judged they were back somewhere in the middle, he stood
with his feet spread, his fists on his hips, and looked east again. From
where they stood, they couldn't make out the sides of the lifeless stretch,
the places where growth began.
Looking to the east, though, the pattern was evident. A clearly defined
strip--miles wide--ran off into the distance.
Nothing grew within the bounds of the straight strip of lifeless
desert, whether going over rock or sandy ground. To either side the ground
with widely spaced brush and lichen growing on the rock was darker. The
place where nothing grew was a lighter tan. In the distance the discrepancy
in the color was even more apparent.
The lifeless strip ran straight for mile after mile toward the far
mountains, gradually becoming but a faint line following the rise of the
ground until, finally, in the hazy distance, it could no longer be seen.
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Kahlan asked in a low, troubled
voice.
"What?" Cara asked. "What are you thinking?"
Richard studied the confused concern on the Mord-Sith's face. "What
kept Darken Rahl's armies in D'Hara? What prevented him, for so many years,
from invading the Midlands and taking it, even though he wanted it?"
"He couldn't cross the boundary," Cara said as if he must be having
heat stroke.
"And what made up the boundary?"
At last, Cara's face, framed by the black desert garb, went white, too.
"The boundary was the underworld?"
Richard nodded. "It was like a rip in the veil, where the underworld
existed in this world. Zedd told us about it. He put the boundary up with a
spell he found in the Keep--a spell from those ancient times of the great
war. Once up, the boundary was a place in this world where the world of the
dead also existed. In that place, where both worlds touched, nothing could
grow."
"But are you so sure things wouldn't still grow there?" Cara asked. "It
was still our world, after all--the world of life."
"It would be impossible for anything to grow there. The world of life
was there, in that spot--the ground was there--but life couldn't exist there
on that ground because it shared that same space with the world of the dead.
Anything there would be touched by death."
Cara looked out at the straight, lifeless strip running off into the
wavering distance. "So you think what? . . . This is a boundary?"
"Was."
Cara looked from his face, to Kahlan, and again out to the distance.
"Dividing what?"
Overhead a flight of black-tipped races came into sight, riding the
high currents, turning lazy circles as they watched.
"I don't know," Richard admitted.
He looked west again, back down the gradual slope running away from the
mountains, back to where they had been.
"But look," Richard said, gesturing out into the burning wasteland from
where they had come. "It runs back toward the Pillars of Creation."
As the things growing thinned and eventually ceased to be back that
way, so too did the lifeless strip. It became indistinguishable from the
surrounding wasteland because there was no life to mark where the line had
been.
"There's no telling how far it runs. For all I know," Richard said,
"it's possible that it runs all the way back to the valley itself."
"That part makes no sense to me," Kahlan said. "I can see what you mean
about it maybe being like the boundaries up in the New World, the boundaries
between Westland, the Midlands, and D'Hara. That much I follow. But the
spirits take me, I don't get why it would run to the Pillars of Creation.
That part just strikes me as more than odd."
Richard turned and gazed back to the east, where they were headed, to
the rumpled gray wall of mountains rising steeply up from the broad desert
floor, studying the distant notch that sat a little north of where the
boundary line ran toward those mountains.
He looked south, to the wagon making its way toward those mountains.
"We better catch up with the others," Richard finally said. "I need to
get back to translating the book."
The spectral spires around Richard glowed under the lingering caress of
the low sun. In the amber light, as he scouted the forsaken brink of the
towering mountains beyond, long pools of shadow were darkening to the
blue-black color of bruises.
The pinnacles of reddish rock stood like stony guardians along the
lower reaches of the desolate foothills, as if listening for the echoing
crunch of his footsteps along the meandering gravel beds.
Richard had felt like being alone to think, so he had set out to scout
by himself. It was hard to think when people were constantly asking
questions.
He was frustrated that the book hadn't yet told him anything that would
in any way help explain the presence of the strange boundary line, much less
the connection of the book's title, the place called the Pillars of
Creation, and those ungifted people like Jennsen. The book, in the beginning
that he'd so far translated, anyway, appeared mostly to be an historical
record dealing with unanticipated matters involving occurrences of "pillars
of Creation," as those like Jennsen were called, and the unsuccessful
attempts at "curing" those "unfortunates."
Richard was beginning to get the clear sense that the book was laying a
careful foundation of early details in preparation for something calamitous.
The nearly quaking care of the recounting of every possible course of action
that had been investigated gave him the feeling that whoever wrote the book
was being painstaking for reasons of consequence.
Not daring to slow their pace, Richard had been translating while
riding in the wagon. The dialect was slightly different from the High
D'Haran he was used to reading, so working out the translation was slow
going, especially sitting in the back of the bouncing wagon. He had no way
of knowing if the book would eventually offer any answers, but he felt a
gnawing worry over what the unfolding account was working up to. He would
have jumped ahead, but he'd learned in the past that doing so often wasted
more time than it saved, since it interfered with accurately grasping the
whole picture, which sometimes led to dangerously erroneous conclusions. He
would just have to keep at it.
After working all day, focused intently on the book, he'd ended up with
a fierce headache. He'd had days without them, but now when they came it
seemed they were worse each time. He didn't tell Kahlan how concerned he was
that he wouldn't make it to the sliph's well in Tanimura. Besides working at
translating, he racked his brain trying to find a solution.
While he had no idea what the key to the headaches brought on by the
gift was, he had the nagging feeling that it was within himself. He feared
it was a matter of balance he was failing to see. He had even resorted when
out alone, once, to sitting and meditating as the Sisters had once taught
him in order to try to focus on the gift within. It had been to no avail.
It would be dark soon and they would need to stop for the night. Since
the terrain had changed, it was no longer a simple task to see if the area
all around them was clear. Now there were places where an army could lie in
wait. With the races shadowing them, there was no telling who might know
where to find them. Besides simply wanting a break to think about what he'd
read and what he might find within himself to answer the problem of his
headaches, Richard wanted to check the surrounding area himself.
Richard paused for a moment to watch a family of quail, the juveniles
fully grown, hurry across an open patch of ground. They trotted across the
exposed gravel in a line while the father, perched atop a rock, stood
lookout. As soon as they melted into the brush, they were again invisible.
Small scraggly pine trees dotted the sweep of irregular hills, gullies,
and rocky outcroppings at the fringe of the mountains. Up higher, on the
nearby slopes, larger conifers grew in greater abundance. In low, sheltered
places clumps of brush lay in thick clusters. Thin grasses covered some of
the open ground.
Richard wiped sweat from his eyes. He hoped that with the sun going
down the air might cool a little. As he made his way along the concealment
of the base of a runoff channel in a fold of two hills, he reached for the
strap of his waterskin, about to take a long drink, when movement on a far
hillside caught his attention.
He slipped behind the screen of a long shelf of rock to stay out of
sight. Taking a careful peek, he saw a man making his way down the loose
scree on the side of the hill. The sound of the rock crunching underfoot and
sliding down the slope sent a distant echo through the rocky canyons.
Richard had expected that as they left the forbidding wasteland they
might at any time begin encountering people, so he had had everyone change
out of the black outfits of the nomadic desert people and back into their
unassuming traveling clothes. While he was in black trousers and simple
shirt, his sword was hardly inconspicuous. Kahlan, as well, had put on
simple clothes that were more in keeping with the impoverished people of the
Old World, but on Kahlan they didn't seem to make much difference; it was
hard to hide her figure and her hair, but most of all her presence. Once
those green eyes of hers fixed on people, they usually had an urge to drop
to a knee and bow their head. Her clothes made little difference.
No doubt Emperor Jagang had spread their description far and wide and
had offered a reward large enough that even his enemies would find it hard
to resist. For many in the Old World, though, the price of continued life
under the brutal rule of the Imperial Order was too high. Despite the
reward, there were many who hungered to live free and were willing to act to
gain that goal.
There was also the problem of the bond the Lord Rahl had with the
D'Haran people; through that ancient bond forged by Richard's ancestors,
D'Harans could sense where the Lord Rahl was. The Imperial Order could
discover where Richard was by that bond, too. All they had to do was torture
the information out of a D'Haran. If one person failed to talk under
torture, they would not be shy about trying others until they learned what
they wanted.
As Richard watched, the lone man, once he reached the bottom of the
hill, made his way along the gravel beds lining the bottom of the rocky
gullies. Off to Richard's right the wagon and horses were lifting a long
trail of dust. That was where the man seemed to be headed.
At such a distance it was hard to tell for sure, but Richard doubted
that the man was a soldier. He wouldn't likely be a scout, not in his own
homeland, and they weren't near the hotbeds of the revolt against the rule
of the Imperial Order. Richard didn't think there would be any reason for
soldiers to be going this way, through such uninhabited areas. That was,
after all, why he had picked this route, heading east to the shadow of the
mountains before turning to a more northerly route back to where they had
been.
There was also the possibility that the bond had inadvertently revealed
Richard's whereabouts and an army was out looking for him. If the man was a
soldier, there could shortly be many more, like ants, swarming down out of
the hills.
Richard climbed the back side of a short rocky prominence and lay on
his stomach, watching over the top. As the man got closer, Richard could see
that he looked young, under thirty years, a bit scrawny, and was dressed
nothing at all like a soldier. By the way he stumbled, he was not used to
the terrain, or maybe just not used to traveling. It was tiring walking over
ground of loose, sharp, broken rock, especially if it was on a slope, since
it never provided any solid place for a steady stride.
The man stopped, stretching his neck to peer at the wagon. Panting from
the effort of making it down the slope, he combed his fine blond hair back
repeatedly with his fingers, then bent at the waist and rested a hand on a
knee while he caught his breath.
When the man straightened and started out once more, crunching through
the gravel at the bottom of the wash, Richard slid back down the rock. He
used the intervening lay of the land and patches of scraggly pine to screen
himself from sight. He paused from time to time, as he moved closer, to
listen for the heavy footsteps and labored breathing, checking his
dead-reckoning estimation of where the man would be.
From behind a freestanding wall of rock a good sixty feet tall, Richard
carefully peered out for a look. He had managed to close most of the
distance without the man being aware of his presence. Richard moved silently
from tree to rock to the back side of slopes, until he was out ahead of the
man and in his line of travel.
Still as stone behind a twisted reddish spire of rock jutting from the
broken ground, Richard listened to the crunch of footfalls approaching,
listened to the man gulping for breath as he climbed over fingers of rock
that lay in his way.
When the man was not six feet away, Richard stepped out right in front
of him.
The man gasped, clutching his light travel coat beneath his chin as he
cringed back a step.
Richard regarded the man without outward emotion, but inside the
sword's power churned with the menace of rage restrained. For an instant,
Richard felt the power falter. The magic of the sword keyed off its master's
perception of danger, so such hesitation could be because the smaller man
didn't appear to be an immediate threat.
The man's clothes, brown trousers, flaxen shirt, and a light, frayed
fustian coat, had seen better days. He looked to have had a rough time of
his journey--but then, Richard, too, had put on unassuming clothes in order
not to raise suspicion. The man's backpack looked to hold precious little.
Two waterskins, their straps crisscrossed across his chest, bunching the
light coat, were flat and empty. He carried no weapons that Richard saw, not
even a knife.
The man waited expectantly, as if he feared to be the first to speak.
"You appear to be headed for my friends," Richard said, tipping his
head toward the thin golden plume of dust hanging like a beacon in the
sunlight above the darkening plain, giving the man a chance to explain
himself.
The man, wide-eyed, shoulders hunched, raked back his hair several
times. Richard stood before him like a stone pillar, blocking his way. The
man's blue eyes turned to each side, apparently checking to see if he had an
escape route should he decide to bolt.
"I mean you no harm," Richard said. "I just want to know what you're up
to."
"Up to?"
"Why you're headed for the wagon."
The man glanced toward the wagon, not visible beyond the craggy folds
of rock, then down at Richard's sword, and finally up into his eyes.
"I'm ... looking for help," he finally said.
"Help?"
The man nodded. "Yes. I'm searching for the one whose craft is
fighting."
Richard cocked his head. "You're looking for a soldier of some kind?"
He swallowed at the frown on Richard's face. "Yes, that's right."
Richard shrugged. "The Imperial Order has lots of soldiers. I'm sure
that if you keep looking you will come across some."
The man shook his head. "No. I seek the man from far away--from far to
the north. The man who came to bring freedom to many of the oppressed people
of the Old World. The man who gives us all hope that the Imperial Order--may
the Creator forgive their misguided ways--will be cast out of our lives so
that we can be at peace once again."
"Sorry," Richard said, "I don't know anyone like that."
The man didn't look disappointed by Richard's words. He looked more
like he simply didn't believe them. His fine features were pleasant-looking,
even though he appeared unconvinced.
"Do you think you could"--the man hesitantly lifted an arm out,
pointing--"at least... let me have a drink?"
Richard relaxed a bit. "Sure."
He pulled the strap off his shoulder and tossed his waterskin to the
man. He caught it as if it were precious glass he feared to drop. He pried
at the stopper, finally getting it free, and started gulping the water.
He stopped abruptly, lowering the waterskin. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean
to start drinking all your water right down."
"It's all right." Richard gestured for him to drink up. "I have more
back at the wagon. You look to need it."
As Richard hooked a thumb behind his wide leather belt, the man bowed
his head in thanks before tipping the waterskin up for a long drink.
"Where did you hear about this man who fights for freedom?" Richard
asked.
The man brought the waterskin down again, his eyes never leaving
Richard as he paused to catch his breath. "From many a tongue. The freedom
he has spread down here in the Old World has brought hope to us all."
Richard smiled inwardly at how the bright hope of freedom burned even
in a dark place like the heart of the Old World. There were people
everywhere who hungered for the same things in life, for a chance to live
their life free and by their own labor to better themselves.
Overhead a black-tipped race, wings spread wide, popped into sight as
it glided across the open swath of sky above the rise of rock to each side.
Richard didn't have his bow, but the race stayed out of range, anyway.
The man shrank at seeing the race the way a rabbit would shrink when it
saw a hawk.
"Sorry I can't help you," Richard said when the race had disappeared.
He checked behind, in the direction of the wagon, out beyond the nearby
hill. "I'm traveling with my wife and family, looking for work, for a place
to mind our own business."
Richard's business was the revolution, if he was to have a chance for
his plan to work, and there were a number of people waiting on him in that
regard. He had more urgent problems, first, though.
"But, Lord Rahl, my people need--"
Richard spun back around. "Why would you call me that?"
"I'm, I'm sorry." The man swallowed. "I didn't mean to anger you."
"What makes you think I'm this Lord Rahl?"
The man painted his hand up and down in front of Richard as he
sputtered, trying to find words. "You, you, you just... are. I can't imagine
... what else you want me to say. I'm sorry if I have offended you by being
so forward, Lord Rahl."
Cara stalked out from behind a rocky spire. "What have we here?"
The man gasped in surprise at seeing her as he flinched back yet
another step, clutching the waterskin to his chest as if it were a shield of
steel.
Tom, his silver knife to hand, stepped up out of a gully behind the
man, blocking the way should the man decide to run back the way he'd come.
The man turned in a circle to see Tom towering behind. As he finally
came back around and saw Kahlan standing beside Richard, he let out another
gasp. They all were wearing dusty traveling clothes, but somehow Richard
didn't suppose that at that moment they looked at all like simple travelers
in search of work.
"Please," the man said, "I don't mean any harm."
"Take it easy," Richard said as he stole a sidelong glance at Cara--
his words meant not only for the man but the Mord-Sith as well. "Are you
alone?" Richard asked him.
"Yes, Lord Rahl. I'm on a mission for my people, just as I told you.
You are of course to be forgiven your aggressive nature--I would expect
nothing less. I want you to know I hold no feelings of resentment toward
you."
"Why does he think you're the Lord Rahl?" Cara said to Richard in a
tone that sounded more accusation than question.
"I've heard the descriptions," the man put in. Still clutching the
waterskin to his chest, he pointed with the other hand. "And that sword.
I've heard about Lord Rahl's sword." His gaze moved cautiously to Kahlan.
"And the Mother Confessor, of course," he added, dipping his head.
"Of course," Richard sighed.
He'd expected that he would have to hide the sword around strangers,
but now he knew just how important that was going to be whenever they went
into any populated areas. The sword would be relatively easy to hide. Not so
with Kahlan. He thought that maybe they could cover her in rags and say she
was a leper.
The man leaned cautiously out, arm extended, and handed Richard his
waterskin. "Thank you, Lord Rahl."
Richard took a long drink of the terrible-tasting water before offering
it to Kahlan. She lifted hers out for him to see as she declined with a
single shake of her head. Richard took another long swig before replacing
the stopper and slinging the strap back over his shoulder.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Owen."
"Well, Owen, why don't you come back to camp with us for the night. We
can fill up your waterskins for you, at least, before you're on your way in
the morning."
Cara was near to bursting as she gritted her teeth at Richard. "Why
don't you just let me see to--"
"I think Owen has problems we can all understand. He's concerned for
his friends and family. In the morning, he can be on his way, and we can be
on ours."
Richard didn't want the man out there somewhere, in the dark, where
they couldn't as easily keep an eye on him as they could if he were in camp.
In the morning it would be easy enough to make sure that he wasn't following
them. Cara finally understood Richard's intent and relaxed. He knew she
would want any stranger in her sight while Richard and Kahlan were sleeping.
Kahlan at his side, Richard started back to the wagon. The man
followed, his head swiveling side to side, from Tom to Cara, and back again.
Since they were headed back to the wagon, Richard finished what water
remained in his waterskin while, behind, Owen thanked him for the invitation
and promised not to be any trouble.
Richard intended to see to it that Owen kept his promise.
Up in the wagon, Richard dunked Owen's two waterskins in the barrel
that still had water. Owen, sitting with his back pressed against a wheel,
glanced up at Richard from time to time, watching expectantly, as Cara
glared at him. Cara clearly didn't like the fellow, but as protective as
Mord-Sith were, that didn't necessarily mean that it was warranted.
For some reason, though, Richard didn't care for the man, either. It
wasn't so much that he disliked him, just that he couldn't warm to the
fellow. He was polite and certainly didn't look threatening, but there was
something about the man's attitude that made Richard feel... edgy.
Tom and Friedrich broke up dried wood they'd collected, feeding it into
the small fire. The wonderful aroma of pine pitch covered the smell of the
nearby horses.
From time to time Owen cast a fearful eye at Cara, Kahlan, Tom, and
Friedrich. By far, though, he seemed most uneasy about Jennsen. He tried to
avert his eyes from her, tried not to look her directly in the eye, but his
gaze kept being drawn to her red hair shining in the firelight. When Betty
approached to investigate the stranger, Owen stopped breathing. Richard told
Owen that the goat just wanted attention. Owen gingerly patted the top of
Betty's head as if the goat were a gar that might take off his arm if he
weren't careful.
Jennsen, with a smile and ignoring the way he stared at her hair,
offered Owen some of her dried meat.
Owen just stared wide-eyed up at her leaning down over him.
"I'm not a witch," she said to Owen. "People think my red hair is a
sign that I'm a witch. I'm not. I can assure you, I have no magic."
The edge in her voice surprised Richard, reminding him that there was
iron under the feminine grace.
Still wide-eyed, Owen said, "Of course not. I, I... just never saw such
... beautiful hair before, that's all."
"Why, thank you," Jennsen said, her smile returning. She again offered
him a piece of dried meat.
"I'm sorry," Owen said in polite apology, "but I prefer not to eat
meat, if it's all right with you."
He quickly reached in his pocket, bringing out a cloth pouch holding
dried biscuit. He forced a smile at Jennsen as he held out the biscuits.
"Would you like one of mine?"
Tom started, glaring at Owen.
"Thanks, no," Jennsen said as she withdrew her extended hand and sat
down on a low, flat rock. She snagged Betty by an ear and made her lie down
at her feet. "You'd best eat the biscuits yourself if you don't want meat,"
she said to Owen. "I'm afraid we don't have a lot that isn't."
"Why don't you eat meat?" Richard asked.
Owen looked up over his shoulder at Richard in the wagon above him. "I
don't like the thought of harming animals just to satisfy my want of food."
Jennsen smiled politely. "That's a kindhearted sentiment."
Owen twitched a smile before his gaze was drawn once again to her hair.
"It's just the way I feel," he said, finally looking away from her.
"Darken Rahl felt the same way," Cara said, turning the glare on
Jennsen. "I saw him horsewhip a woman to death because he caught her eating
a sausage in the halls of the People's Palace. It struck him as
disrespectful of his feelings."
Jennsen stared in astonishment.
"Another time," Cara went on as she chewed a bite of sausage, "I was
with him when he came around a corner outside, near the gardens. He spotted
a cavalry man atop his horse eating a meat pie. Darken Rahl lashed out with
a flash of conjured lightning, beheading the man's horse in an
instant--thump, it dropped into the hedge. The man managed to land on his
feet as the rest of his horse crashed to the ground. Darken Rahl reached
out, drew the man's sword, and in a fit of anger slashed the belly of the
horse open. Then he seized the soldier by the scruff of his neck and shoved
his face into the horse's innards, screaming at him to eat. The man tried
his best, but ended up suffocated in the horse's warm viscera."
Owen covered his mouth as he closed his eyes.
Cara waved her sausage as if indicating Darken Rahl standing before
her. "He turned to me, the fire gone out of him, and asked me how people
could be so cruel as to eat meat."
Jennsen, her mouth hanging open, asked, "What did you say?"
Cara shrugged. "What could I say? I told him I didn't know."
"But why would people eat meat, then, if he was like that?" Jennsen
asked.
"Most of the time, he wasn't. Vendors sold meat at the palace and he
usually paid it no mind. Sometimes he would shake his head in disgust, or
call them cruel, but usually he didn't even take notice of it."
Friedrich was nodding. "That was the thing about the man--you never
knew what he was going to do. He might smile at a person, or have them
tortured to death. You never knew."
Cara stared into the low flames of the fire before her. "There was no
way to reason out how he would react to anything." Her voice took on a
quiet, haunted quality. "A lot of people simply decided that it was only a
matter of time until he killed them, too, and so they lived their lives as
the condemned would, waiting for the axe to fall, taking no pleasure in life
or the thought of their future."
Tom nodded his grim agreement with Cara's assessment of life in D'Hara
as he fed a crook of driftwood into the fire.
"Is that what you did, Cara?" Jennsen asked.
Cara looked up and scowled. "I am Mord-Sith. Mord-Sith are always ready
to embrace death. We do not wish to die old and toothless."
Owen, nibbling his dried biscuit as if out of obligation to eat since
the rest of them were, was clearly shaken by the story. "I can't imagine
life with such savagery as all of you must live. Was this Darken Rahl
related to you, Lord Rahl?" Owen suddenly seemed to think he might have made
a mistake, and rushed to amend his question. "He has the same name ... so I
thought, well, I just thought--but I didn't mean to imply that I thought you
were like him...."
Stepping down from the wagon, Richard handed Owen his full wa-terskins.
"He was my father."
"I didn't mean anything by the question. I would never intentionally
cast aspersions on a man's father, especially a man who--"
"I killed him," Richard said.
Richard didn't feel like elaborating. He recoiled from the very thought
of going into the whole dreadful tale.
Owen gaped around as if he were a fawn surrounded by wolves.
"He was a monster," Cara said, appearing to feel the need to rise to
Richard's defense. "Now the people of D'Hara have a chance to look forward
to a future of living their lives as they wish."
Richard sat down beside Kahlan. "At least they will if they can be free
of the Imperial Order."
Head down, Owen nibbled on his biscuit as he watched the others.
When no one else spoke, Kahlan did. "Why don't you tell us your reasons
for coming here, Owen."
Richard recognized her tone as that of the Mother Confessor asking a
polite question meant to put a frightened petitioner at ease.
He dipped his head respectfully. "Yes, Mother Confessor."
"You know her, too?" Richard asked.
Owen nodded. "Yes, Lord Rahl."
"How?"
The man's gaze shifted from Richard to Kahlan and back again.
"Word of you and the Mother Confessor has spread everywhere. Word of
the way you freed the people of Altur'Rang from the oppression of the
Imperial Order is known far and wide. Those who want freedom know that you
are the one who gives it."
Richard frowned. "What do you mean, I'm the one who gives it?"
"Well, before, the Imperial Order ruled. They are brutal--forgive me,
they are misguided and don't know any better. That is why their rule is so
brutal. Perhaps it isn't their fault. It is not for me to say." Owen looked
away as he tried to come up with words while apparently seeing his own
visions of what the Imperial Order had done to convince him of their
brutality. "Then you came and gave people freedom--just as you did in
Altur'Rang."
Richard wiped a hand across his face. He needed to translate the book,
he needed to find out what was behind the thing Cara had touched and the
black-tipped races following them, he needed to get back to Victor and those
who were engaged in the revolt against the Order, he was past due to meet
Nicci, and he needed to deal with his headaches. At least, maybe Nicci could
help with that much of it.
"Owen, I don't 'give' people freedom."
"Yes, Lord Rahl."
Owen evidently took Richard's words as something he dared not argue
with, but his eyes clearly said that he didn't believe it.
"Owen, what do you mean when you say that you think I give people
freedom?"
Owen took a tiny bite of his biscuit as he glanced around at the
others. He squirmed his shoulders in a self-conscious shrug. Finally, he
cleared his throat.
"Well, you, you do what the Imperial Order does--you kill people." He
waved his biscuit awkwardly, as if it were a sword, stabbing the air. "You
kill those who enslave people, and then you give the people who were
enslaved their freedom so that peace can return."
Richard took a deep breath. He wasn't sure if Owen meant it the way it
came out, or if it was just that he was having difficulty explaining himself
in front of people who made him nervous.
"That's not exactly the way it is," Richard said.
"But that's why you came down here. Everyone knows it. You came down
here to the Old World to give people freedom."
Elbows on his knees, Richard leaned forward rubbing his palms together
as he thought about how much he wanted to explain. He felt a wave of
calmness when Kahlan draped a gentle, comforting hand over the back of his
shoulder. He didn't want to go into the horror of how he had been taken
prisoner and taken from Kahlan, thinking he would never see her again.
Richard put the whole weight of emotion over that long ordeal aside and
took another approach. "Owen, I'm from up in the New World--"
"Yes, I know," Owen said as he nodded. "And you came here to free
people from--"
"No. That's not the truth of it. We lived in the New World. We were
once at peace, apparently much like your people were. Emperor Ja-gang--"
"The dream walker."
"Yes, Emperor Jagang, the dream walker, sent his armies to conquer the
New World, to enslave our people--"
"My people, too."
Richard nodded. "I understand. I know what a horror that is. His
soldiers are rampaging up through the New World, murdering, enslaving our
people."
Owen turned his watery gaze off into the darkness as he nodded. "My
people, too."
"We tried to fight back," Kahlan told him. "But there are too many.
Their army is far too vast for us to drive them out of our land."
Owen nibbled his biscuit again, not meeting her gaze. "My people are
terrified of the men of the Order--may the Creator forgive their misguided
ways."
"May they scream in agony for all eternity in the darkest shadow of the
Keeper of the underworld," Cara said in merciless correction.
Owen stared slack-jawed at such a curse spoken aloud.
"We couldn't fight them like that--simply drive them back to the Old
World," Richard said, bringing Owen's gaze back to him as he went on with
the story. "So I'm down here, in Jagang's homeland, helping people who
hunger to be free to cast off the shackles of the Order. While he's away
conquering our land, he has left his own homeland open to those who hunger
for freedom. With Jagang and his armies away, that gives us a chance to
strike at Jagang's soft underbelly, to do him meaningful harm.
"I'm doing this because it's the only way we can fight back against the
Imperial Order--our only means to succeed. If I weaken his foundation, his
source of men and support, then he will have to withdraw his army from our
land and return south to defend his own.
"Tyranny cannot endure forever. By its very nature it rots everything
it rules, including itself. But that can take lifetimes. I'm trying to
accelerate that process so that I and those I love can be free in our
lifetimes--free to live our own lives. If enough people rise up against the
Imperial Order's rule, it may even loosen Jagang's grip on power and bring
him and the Order down.
"That's how I'm fighting him, how I'm trying to defeat him, how I'm
trying to get him out of my land."
Owen nodded. 'This is what we need, too. We are victims of fate. We
need for you to come and get his men out of our land, and then to withdraw
your sword, your ways, from our people so we may live in tranquility again.
We need you to give us freedom."
The driftwood popped, sending a glowing swirl of sparks skyward.
Richard, hanging his head, tapped his fingertips together. He didn't think
the man had heard a word he'd said. They needed rest. He needed to translate
the book. They needed to get to where they were going. At least he didn't
have a headache.
"Owen, I'm sorry," he finally said in a quiet voice. "I can't help you
in so direct a manner. But I would like you to understand that my cause is
to your advantage, too, and that what I'm doing will also cause Jagang to
eventually pull his troops out of your homeland as well, or at least weaken
their presence so that you can throw them out yourselves."
"No," Owen said. "His men will not leave my land until you come and ..
." Owen winced. "And destroy them."
The very word, the implication, looked sickening to the man.
"Tomorrow," Richard said, no longer bothering to try to sound polite,
"we have to be on our way. You will have to be on your way as well. I wish
you success in ridding your people of the Imperial Order."
"We cannot do such a thing," Owen protested. He sat up straighten "We
are not savages. You and those like you--the unenlightened ones--it is up to
you to do it and give us freedom, I am the only one who can bring you. You
must come and do as your kind does. You must give our empire freedom."
Richard rubbed his fingertips across the furrows of his brow. Cara
started to rise. A look from Richard sat her back down.
"I gave you water," Richard said as he stood. "I can't give you
freedom."
"But you must--"
"Double watch tonight," Richard said as he turned to Cara, cutting Owen
off.
Cara nodded once as her mouth twisted with a satisfied smile of iron
determination.
"In the morning," Richard added, "Owen will be on his way."
"Yes," she said, her blue-eyed glare sliding to Owen, "he certainly
will be."
What is it?" Kahlan asked as she rode up beside the wagon.
Richard looked to be furious about something. She saw then that he had
the book in one hand; his other was a fist. He opened his mouth, about to
speak, but when Jennsen, up on the seat beside Tom, turned back to see what
was going on, Richard said to her instead, "Kahlan and I are going to check
the road up ahead. Keep your eye on Betty so she doesn't jump out, will you,
Jenn?"
Jennsen smiled at him and nodded.
"If Betty gives you any trouble," Tom said, "just let me know and I'll
take her to a lady I know and have some goat sausages made up."
Jennsen grinned at their private joke and gave Tom a good-natured elbow
in his ribs. As Richard climbed over the side of the wagon and dropped to
the ground, she snapped her fingers at the tail-wagging goat.
"Betty! You just stay there. Richard doesn't need you tagging along
every single time."
Betty, front hooves on the chafing rail, bleated as she looked up at
Jennsen, as if asking for her to reconsider.
"Down," Jennsen said in admonishment. "Lie down."
Betty bleated and reluctantly hopped back down into the wagon bed, but
she would settle for no less than a scratch behind the ears as consolation
before she would lie down.
Kahlan leaned over from her seat in the saddle and untied the reins to
Richard's horse from the back of the wagon. He stepped into the stirrup and
gracefully swung up in one fluid motion. She could see that he was agitated
about something, but it made her heart sing just to look at him.
He shifted his weight forward slightly, urging his horse ahead. Kahlan
squeezed her legs to the side of her own horse to spur her into a canter to
keep up with Richard. He rode out ahead, rounding several turns in the
flatter land among the rough hillsides, until he caught up with Cara and
Friedrich, patrolling out in the lead.
"We're going to check out front for a while," he told them. "Why don't
you fall back and check behind."
Kahlan knew that Richard was sending them to the back because if he
took Kahlan to the back under the pretense of watching anything that might
come up on them from behind, Cara would keep falling back to check on them.
If they were out front, Cara wouldn't worry about them dropping back and
getting lost.
Cara laid her reins over and turned back. Sweat stuck Kahlan's shirt to
her back as she leaned over her horse's withers, urging her ahead as
Richard's horse sprang away. Despite the clumps of tall grass dotting the
foothills and occasional sparse patches of woods, the heat was still with
them. It cooled some at night, now, but the days were hot, with the humidity
increasing as the clouds built up against the wall of mountains to their
right.
Up close, the barrier of rugged mountains to the east was an
intimidating sight. Sheer rock walls rose up below projecting plateaus
heaped to their very edge with loose rock crumbled from yet higher plateaus
and walls, as if the entire range was all gradually crumbling. With drops of
thousands of feet at the fringe of overhanging shelves of rock, climbing
such unstable scree would be impossible. If there were passes through the
arid slopes, they were no doubt few and would prove difficult.
But making it past those gray mountains of scorching rock, they could
now see, was hardly the biggest problem.
Those closer mountains spreading north and south in the burning heat at
the edge of the desert partially hid what lay to the other side--a far more
daunting range of snowcapped peaks rising up to completely block any passage
east. Those imposing mountains were beyond the scale of any Kahlan had ever
seen. Not even the most rugged of the Rang'Shada Mountains in the Midlands
were their match. These mountains were like a race of giants. Precipitous
walls of rock soared thousands of feet straight up. Harrowing slopes rose
unbroken by any pass or rift and were so arduous that few trees could find a
foothold. Lofty snow-packed peaks that ascended majestically above windswept
clouds were jammed so close together that it reminded her more of a knife's
long jagged edge than separate summits.
The day before, when Kahlan had seen Richard studying those imposing
mountains, she had asked him if he thought there was any way across them. He
had said no, that the only way he could see to get beyond was possibly the
notch he'd spotted before, when he had found the place where the strange
boundary had once been, and that notch still lay some distance north.
For now, they skirted the dry side of the closer mountains as that
range made its way north along the more easily traversed lowlands.
Along the base of a gentle hill covered in clumps of brown grasses,
Richard finally slowed his horse. He turned in his saddle, checking that the
others were still coming, if a goodly distance behind.
He pulled his horse close beside her. "I skipped ahead in the book."
Kahlan didn't like the sound of that. "When I asked you before why you
didn't skip ahead, you said that it wasn't a wise thing to do.'\
"I know, but I wasn't really getting anywhere and we need answers^ As
their horses settled into a comfortable walk, Richard rubbed his shoulders.
"After all that heat I can't believe how cold it's getting."
"Cold? What are you--"
"You know those rare people like Jennsen?" The leather of his saddle
squeaked as he leaned toward her. "Ones born pristinely ungifted-- without
even that tiny spark of the gift? The pillars of Creation? Well, back when
this book was written, they weren't so rare."
"You mean it was more common for them to be born?"
"No, the ones who had been born began to grow up, get married, and have
children--ungifted children."
Kahlan looked over in surprise. "The broken links in the chain of the
gift that you were talking about, before?"
Richard nodded. "They were children of the Lord Rahl. Back then, it
wasn't like it has been in recent times with Darken Rahl, or his father.
From what I can tell, all the children of the Lord Rahl and his wife were
part of his family, and treated as such, even though they were born with
this problem. It seems that the wizards tried to help them-- both the direct
offspring, and then their children, and their children. They tried to cure
them."
"Cure them? Cure them of what?"
Richard lifted his arms in a heated gesture of frustration. "Of being
born ungifted--of being born without even that tiny spark of the gift like
everyone else has. The wizards back then tried to restore the breaks in the
link."
"How did they think they would be able to cure someone of not having
even the spark of the gift?"
Richard pressed his lips together as he thought of a way to explain
it_"Well, you know the wizards who sent you across the boundary to find
Zedd?"
"Yes," Kahlan said in a suspicious drawl.
"They weren't born with the gift--born wizards, that is. What were
they--second or third wizards? Something like that? You told me about them,
once." He snapped his fingers as it came to him. "Wizards of the third
Order. Right?"
"Yes. Just one, Giller, was the Second Order. None were able to pass
the tests to be a wizard of the First Order, like Zedd, because they didn't
have the gift. Being wizards was their calling, but they weren't gifted in
the conventional sense--but they still had that spark of the gift that
everyone has."
"That's what I'm talking about," Richard said. "They weren't born with
the gift to be wizards--just the spark of it like everyone else. Yet Zedd
somehow trained them to be able to use magic--to be wizards-- even though
they weren't born that way, born with the gift to be wizards."
"Richard, that was a lifetime of work."
"I know, but the point is that Zedd was able to help them to be
wizards--at least wizards enough to pass his tests and conjure magic."
"Yes, I suppose. When I was young they taught me about the workings of
magic and the Wizard's Keep, about those people and creatures in the
Midlands with magic. They may not have been born with the gift, but they had
worked a lifetime to become wizards. They were wizards," she insisted.
Richard's mouth turned up with the kind of smile that told her that she
had just framed the essence of his argument for him. "But they had not been
born with that aspect, that attribute, of the gift." He leaned toward her.
"Zedd, besides training them, must have used magic to help them become
wizards, right?"
Kahlan frowned at the thought. "I don't know. They never told me about
their training to become wizards. That was never germane to their
relationship with me or my training."
"But Zedd has Additive Magic," Richard pressed. "Additive can change
things, add to them, make them more than they are."
"All right," Kahlan cautiously agreed. "What's the point?"
"The point is that Zedd took people who weren't born with the gift to
be wizards and he trained them but--more importantly--he must have also used
his power to help them along that path by altering how they were born. He
had to have added to their gift to make them more than they were born to
be." Richard glanced over at her as his horse stepped around a small,
scraggly pine. "He altered people with magic."
Kahlan let out a deep breath as she looked away from Richard and ahead
at the gentle spread of grassy hills to either side of them, as she tried to
fully grasp the concept of what he was saying.
"I never considered that before, but all right," she finally said. "So,
what of it?"
"We thought that only the wizards of old could do such a thing, but,
apparently, it's not a lost art nor would it be entirely so far-fetched as I
had imagined for the wizards back then to believe they could change what
was, into what they thought it ought to be. What I'm saying is that, like
what Zedd did to give people that with which they were not born, so too did
the wizards of old try to give people born as pillars of Creation a spark of
the gift."
Kahlan felt a chill of realization. The implication was staggering. Not
just the wizards of old, but Zedd, too, had used magic to alter the very
nature of people, the very nature of what they were, how they were born.
She supposed that he had only helped them to achieve what was their
greatest ambition in life--their calling--by enhancing what they already had
been born with. He helped them to reach their full potential. But that was
for men who had the innate potential. While the wizards of long ago probably
had done similar things to help people, they had also sometimes used their
power for less benevolent reasons.
"So," he said, "the wizards back then, who were experienced in altering
people's abilities, thought that these people called the pillars of Creation
could be cured."
"Cured of not having been born gifted," she said in a flat tone of
incredulity.
"Not exactly. They weren't trying to make them into wizards, but they
thought they could at least be cured of not having that infinitesimal spark
of the gift that simply enabled them to interact with magic."
Kahlan took a purging breath. "So then what happened?"
"This book was written after the great war had ended--after the barrier
had been created and the Old World had been sealed away. It was written
after the New World was at peace, or, at least, after the barrier kept the
Old World contained.
"But remember what we found out before? That we think that during the
war Wizard Ricker and his team had done something to halt Sub-tractive
Magic's ability to be passed on to the offspring of wizards? Well, after the
war, those born with the gift started becoming increasingly uncommon, and
those who were being born were being born without the Subtractive side."
"So, after the war," she said, "those who were born with the gift of
both Additive and Subtractive were rapidly becoming nonexistent. We already
knew that."
"Right." Richard leaned toward her and lifted the book. "But then, when
there are fewer wizards being born, all of a sudden the wizards additionally
realize that they have all these pristinely ungifted--breaks altogether in
the link to magic--on their hands. Suddenly, on top of the problem of the
birth rate of those with the gift to be wizards dropping, they were faced
with what they called pillars of Creation."
Kahlan swayed in the saddle as she thought about it, trying to imagine
the situation at the Keep at the time. "I can see that they would have been
pretty concerned."
His voice lowered meaningfully. "They were desperate."
Kahlan laid her reins over, moving in behind Richard as his horse
stepped around an ancient, fallen tree that had been bleached silver from
the sweltering sun.
"So, I suppose," Kahlan asked as she walked her horse back up beside
him, "that the wizards started to do the same thing Zedd did? Trained those
who had the calling--those who wished to be wizards but had not been born
with the gift?"
"Yes, but back then," Richard said, "they trained those with only
Additive to be able to use the Subtractive, too, like full wizards of the
time. As time went on, though, even that was being lost to them, and they
were only able to do what Zedd did--train men to be wizards but they could
only wield Additive Magic.
"But that isn't really what the book is about," Richard said as he
gestured dismissively. "That was just a side point to record what they had
attempted. They started out with confidence. They thought that these pillars
of Creation could be cured of being pristinely ungifted, much like wizards
with only Additive could be trained to use both sides of the magic, and
those without the gift for wizardry could be made wizards able to use at
least the Additive side of it."
The way he used his hands when he talked reminded her of the way Zedd
did when he became worked up. "They tried to modify the very nature of how
these people had been born. They tried to take people without any spark of
the gift, and alter them in a desperate attempt to give them the ability to
interact with magic. They weren't just adding or enhancing, they were trying
to create something out of nothing."
Kahlan didn't like the sound of that. They knew that in those ancient
times the wizards had great power, and they altered people with the gift,
manipulated their gift, to suit a specific purpose.
They created weapons out of people.
In the great war, Jagang's ancestors were one such weapon: dream
walkers. Dream walkers were created to be able to take over the minds of
people in the New World and control them. Out of desperation, the bond of
the Lord Rahl was created to counter that weapon, to protect a people from
the dream walkers.
Any number of human weapons were conjured from the gifted. Such changes
were often profound, and they were irrevocable. At times, the creations were
monsters of boundless cruelty. From this heritage, Ja-gang had been born.
During that great war, one of the wizards who had been put on trial for
treason refused to reveal what damage he had done. When even torture failed
to gain the man's confession, the wizards conducting the trial turned to the
talents of a wizard named Merritt and ordered the creation of a Confessor.
Magda Searus, the first Confessor, extracted the man's confession. The
tribunal was so pleased with the results of Wizard Merritt's conjuring that
they commanded that an order of Confessors be created.
Kahlan felt no different than other people felt, she was no less human,
no less a woman, loved life no less, but her Confessor's power was the
result of that conjuring. She, too, was a descendant of women altered to be
weapons--in this case weapons designed to find the truth.
"What's the matter?" Richard asked.
She glanced over and saw the look of concern on his face. Kahlan forced
a smile and shook her head that it was nothing.
"So what is it that you discovered by jumping ahead in the book?"
Richard took a deep breath as he folded his hands over the pommel of
the saddle. "Essentially, they were attempting to use color in order to help
people born without eyes ... to see."
From Kahlan's understanding of magic and of history, this was
fundamentally different from even the most malevolent experiments to alter
people into weapons. Even in the most vile of these instances, they were
attempting to take away some attribute of their humanity and at the same
time add to or enhance an elemental ability. In none of it were they trying
to create that which was not there at all.
"In other words," Kahlan summed up, "they failed."
Richard nodded. "So, here they were, the great war was long over and
the Old World--those who had wanted to end magic, much like the Imperial
Order--was safely sealed away beyond the barrier that had been created. Now
they find out that the birth rate of those carrying the gift of wizardry is
plummeting, and that the magic engendered by the House of Rahl, the bond
with his people designed to stop the dream walkers from taking them, has an
unexpected consequence--it also gives birth to the pristinely ungifted, who
are an irreversible break in the lineage of magic."
"They have two problems, then," Kahlan said. "They have fewer wizards
being born to deal with problems of magic, and they have people being born
with no link at all to the magic."
"That's right. And the second problem was growing faster than the
first. In the beginning, they thought they would find a solution, a cure.
They didn't. Worse, as I explained before, those born of the pristinely
ungifted, like Jennsen, always bear children the same as they. In a few
generations, the number of the people without the link to the gift was
growing faster than anyone ever expected."
Kahlan let out a deep breath. "Desperate indeed."
"It was becoming chaos."
She hooked a loose strand of hair back. "What did they decide?"
Richard regarded her with one of those looks that told her he was
pretty disturbed by what he'd found.
"They chose magic over people. They deemed that this attribute-- magic,
or those who possessed it--was more important than human life." His voice
rose. "Here they took the very thing they fought the war over, the right of
those who were born the way they were--in that case people born with
magic--to their own lives, to exist, and they turned it all around to be
that this attribute was more important than the life which held it!"
He let out a breath and lowered his voice. "There were too many to
execute, so they did the next best thing--they banished them."
Kahlan's eyebrows went up. "Banished them? To where?"
Richard leaned toward her with fire in his eyes. "The Old World."
"What!"
Richard shrugged, as if speaking on behalf of the wizards back then,
mocking their reasoning. "What else could they do? They could hardly execute
them; they were friends and family. Many of those normal people with the
spark of the gift--but who were not gifted as wizards or sorceresses and so
didn't think of themselves as gifted--had sons, daughters, brothers,
sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors who had married these pristinely
ungifted, these pillars of Creation. They were part of society--a society
which was less and less populated by the truly gifted.
"In a society where they were increasingly outnumbered and mistrusted,
the ruling gifted couldn't bring themselves to put all these tainted people
to death."
"You mean they even considered it?"
Richard's eyes told her that they had and what he thought of the
notion. "But in the end, they couldn't. At the same time, after trying
everything, they now realized that they couldn't ever restore the link to
magic once it was broken by these people, and such people were marrying and
having children, and the children were marrying and having children--who in
every case passed along this taint. And, those so tainted were increasing in
numbers faster than anyone had imagined.
"As far as the gifted were concerned, their very world was threatened,
in much the same way it had been threatened by the war. That was, after all,
what those in the Old World had been trying to do-- destroy magic--and here
it was, the very thing they feared, happening.
"They couldn't repair the damage, they couldn't stop it from spreading,
and they couldn't put to death all those among them. At the same time, with
the taint multiplying, they knew that they were running out of time. So,
they settled on what to them was the only way out-- banishment."
"And they could cross the barrier?" she asked.
"Those with the gift, for all practical purposes, were prevented from
crossing the barrier, but for those who were pillars of Creation, magic did
not exist; they were unaffected by it, so, to them, the barrier was not an
obstacle."
"How could those in charge be sure they had all the pillars of
Creation? If any escaped, the banishment would fail to solve their problem."
"Those with the gift--wizards and sorceresses--can somehow recognize
those pristinely ungifted for what they are: holes in the world, as Jennsen
said those like her were called. The gifted can see them, but not sense them
with their gift. Apparently, it wasn't a problem to know who the pillars of
Creation were."
"Can you tell any difference?" Kahlan asked. "Can you sense Jennsen as
being different? Being a hole in the world?"
"No. But I've not been taught to use my ability. How about you?"
Kahlan shook her head. "I'm not a sorceress, so I guess that I don't
have the ability to detect those like her." She shifted her weight in her
saddle. "So, what happened with those people back then?"
"The people of the New World collected all those ungifted offspring of
the House of Rahl and their every single last descendant, and sent the whole
lot of them across the great barrier, to the Old World, where the people had
professed that they wanted mankind to be free of magic."
Richard smiled with the irony, even of such a grim event as this. "The
wizards of the New World, in essence, gave their enemy in the Old World
exactly what they professed to want, what they had been fighting for:
mankind without magic."
His smile withered. "Can you imagine deciding that we had to banish
Jennsen and send her into some fearful unknown, simply because of the fact
that she can't see magic?"
Kahlan shook her head as she tried to envision such a time. "What a
horror, to be uprooted and sent away, especially to the enemy of your own
people."
Richard rode in silence for a time. Finally, he went on with the story.
"It was a terrifying event for those banished, but it was also traumatic
almost beyond endurance to those who were left. Can you even imagine what it
must have been like. All those friends and relatives suddenly ripped out of
your life, your family? The disruption to trade and livelihood?" Richard's
words came with bitter finality. "All because they decided some attribute
was more important than human life."
Just listening to the story, Kahlan felt as if she had been through an
ordeal. She watched Richard riding beside her, staring off, lost in his own
thoughts.
"Then what?" she finally asked. "Did they ever hear from those who were
banished?"
He shook his head. "No, nothing. They were now beyond the great
barrier. They were gone."
Kahlan stroked her horse's neck, just to feel the comfort of something
alive. "What did they do about those who were born after that?"
Still he stared off. "Killed them."
Kahlan swallowed in revulsion. "I can't imagine how they could do
that."
"They could tell, once the child was born, if it was ungifted. It was
said to be easier then, before it was named."
Kahlan couldn't find her voice for a moment. "Still," she said in a
weak voice, "I can't imagine it."
"It's no different from what Confessors did about the birth of male
Confessors."
His words cut through her. She hated the memory of those times. Hated
the memory of a male child being born to a Confessor. Hated the memory of
them being put to death by command of the mother.
There was said to be no choice. Male Confessors in the past had had no
self-control over their power. They became monsters, started wars, caused
unimaginable suffering.
It was argued that there was no choice but to put a male child of a
Confessor to death, before they were named.
Kahlan couldn't force herself to look up into Richard's eyes. The witch
woman, Shota, had foretold that she and Richard would conceive a male child.
Neither Kahlan nor Richard would ever for an instant consider harming any
child of theirs, a child resulting from their love for one another, from
their love of life. She couldn't imagine putting a child of theirs to death
for being born a male child of her as a Confessor, or an ungifted male or
female child of Richard for being a Rahl. How could anyone say that such a
life had no right to exist because of who they were, what they were like, or
what they might possibly become.
"Somewhere along the line after this book was written," Richard said in
a quiet voice, "things changed. When this book was written, the Lord Rahl of
D'Hara always married, and they knew when he produced an offspring. When the
child was pristinely ungifted, they ended its life as mercifully as they
could.
"At some point, ruling wizards of the House of Rahl became like Darken
Rahl. They took any woman they wanted, whenever they wanted. The details,
such as if an ungifted child born of those couplings was actually a pillar
of Creation, became unimportant to them. They simply killed any offspring,
except the gifted heir."
"But they were wizards--they could have told which ones were like that
and at least not killed the rest."
"If they wanted, I suppose they could have, but, like Darken Rahl,
their only interest was in the single gifted heir. They simply killed the
rest."
"So, such offspring hid for fear of their life and one managed to
escape the grasp of Darken Rahl until you killed him first. And so you have
a sister, Jennsen."
Richard's smile returned. "And so I do."
Kahlan followed his gaze and saw distant specks, black-tipped races,
watching, as they soared on the updrafts of the high cliffs of the mountains
to the east.
She took a purging breath of the hot, humid air. "Richard, those
ungifted offspring that were banished to the Old World, do you think they
survived?"
"If the wizards in the Old World didn't slaughter them."
"But everyone down here in the Old World is the same as in the New
World. I've fought against the soldiers from here--with Zedd and the Sisters
of the Light. We used magic of every sort to try to halt the Order's
advance. I can tell you firsthand that all those from the Old World are
affected by magic, so that means they all are born with that spark of the
gift. There are no broken links in the chain of magic in the Old World."
"From everything I've seen down here, I'd have to agree."
Kahlan wiped sweat from her brow. It was running into her eyes. "So
what happened to those banished people?"
Richard gazed off toward the mountains beneath the races. "I can't
imagine. But it must have been horrifying for them."
"So you think that maybe that was the end of them? That maybe they
perished, or were put to death?"
He regarded her with a sidelong glance. "I don't know. But what I'd
like to know is why that place back there is named the same as they were
called in this book: the Pillars of Creation." His eyes took on a menacing
gleam. "And far worse yet, I'd like to know why, as Jennsen told us, a copy
of this book is among Jagang's most prized possessions."
That troublesome thought had been running through Kahlan's mind as
well.
She looked up at him from beneath a frown. "Maybe you shouldn't have
skipped ahead in your reading of the book, Lord Rahl."
Richard's fleeting smile wasn't all she'd hoped for. "I'll be relieved
if that's the biggest mistake I've made, lately."
"What do you mean?"
He raked his hair back. "Is anything different about your Confessor's
power?"
"Different?" Almost involuntarily, his question caused her to draw
back, to focus inwardly, to take stock of the force she always felt within
herself. "No. It feels the same as always."
The power coiled in the core of her being did not need to be summoned
when there was need of it. As always, it was there at the ready; it only
required that she release her restraint of it for it to be unleashed.
"There's something wrong with the sword," he said, catching her by
surprise. "Wrong with its power."
Kahlan couldn't imagine what to make of such a notion. "How can you
tell? What's different?"
Richard idly stroked his thumbs along the reins turned back over his
fingers. "It's hard to define exactly what's different. I'm just used to the
feeling of it being at my beck and call. It responds when I need it, but for
some reason it seems to be hesitant about doing so."
Kahlan felt that now, more than ever, they needed to get back to
Aydindril and see Zedd. Zedd was the keeper of the sword. Even though they
couldn't take the sword through the sliph, Zedd would be able to give them
insight about any nuance of its power. He would know what to do. He would be
able to help Richard with the headaches, too.
And Kahlan knew that Richard needed help. She could see that he wasn't
himself. His gray eyes held a glaze of pain, but there was something more
etched in his expression, in the way he moved, the way he carried himself.
The whole explanation of the book and what he had discovered seemed to
have sapped his strength.
She was beginning to think that it wasn't she, after all, who was the
one running out of time, but that it was Richard. That thought, despite the
warm afternoon sun, sent cold terror racing through her.
Richard checked the others over his shoulder. "Let's go back to the
wagon. I need to get something warmer to put on. It's freezing today."
114
Zedd peered up the deserted street. He could have sworn that he saw
someone. Using his gift to search for any sign of life told him that there
was no one anywhere around. Still, he remained motionless as he stared.
The warm breeze pressed his simple robes against his bony frame and
gently ruffled his disheveled white hair. A tattered, sun-faded blue dress
that someone had pinned to a second-floor balcony railing to dry flapped
like a flag in the wind. The dress, along with a city full of personal
possessions, had long ago been left behind.
The buildings, their walls painted various colors from a rusty red to
yellow with shutters in bright, contrasting hues, stuck out to slightly
varying degrees on either side of the narrow cobbled street, making a canyon
of colorful walls. Most of the second stories overhung the bottom floors by
a few feet, and, with their eaves hanging out even more, the buildings
closed off the better part of the sky except for a snaking slit of afternoon
sunlight that followed the sinuous course of the street up and over the
gentle hill. The doors were all tightly shut, most of the windows shuttered.
A pale green gate to an alleyway hung open, squeaking as it swung to and fro
in the breeze.
Zedd decided that it must have been a trick of the light that he'd
seen, maybe a windowpane that had moved in the wind sending a flicker of
light across a wall.
When he was at last sure that he had been mistaken about seeing anyone,
Zedd started back down the street, yet remained close to one side, walking
as quietly as possible. The Imperial Order army had not returned to the city
since Zedd had unleashed the light web that had killed an enormous number of
their force, but that didn't mean that there couldn't be dangers about.
No doubt Emperor Jagang still wanted the city, and especially the Keep,
but he was no fool and he knew that a few more light webs ignited among his
army, no matter how vast it was, would in that instant reduce his force by
such staggering numbers that it could alter the course of the war. Jagang
had fought against the Midland and D'Haran forces for a year and in all
those battles he had not lost as many men as he'd lost in that one blinding
moment. He would not casually risk another such event.
After such a blow Jagang would want to capture the Keep more than he
had ever wanted it before. He would want Zedd more than ever before.
Had Zedd more of the light webs like the one his frantic search through
the Keep had turned up, he would have already unleashed them all on the
Order. He sighed. If only he had more.
Still, Jagang didn't know that he had no more such constructed spells.
As long as Jagang feared that there were more, it served Zedd's purpose in
keeping the Imperial Order out of Aydindril and away from the Wizard's Keep.
Some harm had been done to the Confessors' Palace when Jagang had been
gulled into attacking, but Zedd judged that trying that trick had been worth
the regrettable damage; it had almost netted him and Adie the emperor's
hide. Damage could always be repaired. He vowed that it would be repaired.
Zedd clenched a fist at how close he had come to finishing Jagang that
day. At least he had dealt a mighty blow to his army.
And Zedd might have had Jagang had it not been for that strange young
woman. He shook his head at the memory of actually seeing one who could not
be touched by magic. He'd known, in theory, of their existence, but had
never before known it for certain to be true. Vague references in old books
made for interesting abstract speculation, but seeing it with his own eyes
was quite something else.
It had been an unsettling sight. Adie had been shaken by the encounter
even more than he; she was blind, yet with the aid of the gift could see
better than he could. That day, she had not been able to see the young woman
who was there, but, in some ways, not there. To Zedd's eyes, if not his
gift, she was a beautiful sight, with some of Darken Rahl's looks, but
different and altogether captivating. That she was half sister to Richard
was clear; she shared some of his features, especially the eyes. If only
Zedd could have stopped her, kept her out of the way, convinced her that she
was making a terrible mistake by being with the Order, or even if he could
have killed her, Jagang would not have escaped justice.
Still, Zedd held no illusions about ending the threat of the Imperial
Order simply by killing Jagang. Jagang was merely the brute who led other
brutes in enforcing blind faith in the Order, a blind faith that embraced
death as salvation from what it preached was the corrupt misery of life, a
blind faith in which life itself had no value but as a bloody sacrifice upon
the altar of altruism, a blind faith that blamed the failure of its own
ideas on mankind for being wicked and for failing to offer sufficient
sacrifice in an endless quest for some illusive greater good that grew ever
more distant, a blind faith in an Order that clung to power by feeding off
the carcasses of the productive lives it ruined.
A faith that by its very beliefs rejected reason and embraced the
irrational could not long endure without intimidation and force-- without
brutes like Jagang to enforce such faith.
While Emperor Jagang was brutally effective, it was a mistake to think
that if Jagang were to die that very day it would end the threat of the
Order. It was the Order's ideas that were so dangerous; the priests of the
Order would find other brutes.
The only real way to end the Order's reign of terror was to expose the
naked evil of its teachings to the light of truth, and for those suffering
under its doctrines to throw off the Order's yoke. Until then, they would
have to fight the Imperial Order back as best they could, hoping at least to
eventually contain them.
Zedd poked his head around a corner, watching, listening, sniffing the
wind for any trace of anyone who might be lurking about. The city was
deserted, but on a number of occasions stray Imperial Order soldiers had
wandered in out of the mountains.
After the destruction caused by the light web, panic had swept through
the Order's encampment. Many soldiers had scattered to the hills. Once the
army had regrouped, a large number of men had decided to desert instead of
returning to their units. Tens of thousands of such deserters were rounded
up and executed, their bodies left to rot as a warning of what happened to
those who abandoned the cause of the greater glory of the Imperial Order, or
as the Order liked to put it, the cause of the greater good. Most of the
rest of the men who had run to the hills had then had a change of heart and
straggled back into camp.
There were still some, though, who had not wanted to go back and had
not been caught. For a time, after Jagang's army had moved on, they had
wandered into the city, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, half
starved, to search for food and to loot. Zedd had lost count of how many
such men he had killed.
He was reasonably sure that all of those stragglers were dead, now. The
Order was made up of men mostly from cities and towns. Such men weren't used
to living in the wild. Their job was to overwhelm the enemy, to kill, rape,
terrorize, and plunder. A whole corps of logistics personnel provided them
with support, delivering and dispensing a constant stream of supplies that
rolled in to feed and care for the soldiers. They were violent men, but they
were men who needed to be tended, who depended on the group for their
survival. They didn't last long on their own in the trackless forested
mountains surrounding Ay-dindril.
But Zedd hadn't seen any of them for quite some time. He was reasonably
sure that the stragglers had starved, been killed, or had long ago headed
back south, to the Old World.
There was always the possibility, though, that Jagang had sent
assassins to Aydindril; some of those assassins could be Sisters of the
Light, or worse, Sisters of the Dark. For that reason, Zedd rarely left the
safety of the Keep, and when he did, he was cautious. Too, he hated poking
around the city, seeing it so devoid of life. This had been his home for
much of his life. He remembered the days when the Keep was a hub of
activity--not as it once had been, he knew, but alive with people of all
sorts. He found himself smiling at the memory.
His smile faded. Now the city was a joyless sight, forlorn without
people filling the streets, people talking from one balcony to a neighbor
across the street in another window, people gathering to trade goods in the
market. Not so long ago men would have stopped to have conversations in
doorways while vendors pulled carts of their wares along the narrow streets
and children at play skipped through the throngs. Zedd sighed at the sad
sight of such lifeless streets.
At least those lives were safe, if a long way from home. Although he
had many fundamental differences with the Sisters of the Light, he knew that
their Prelate, Verna, and the rest of the free Sisters would watch over
them.
The only problem was that now that Jagang had nothing in Aydindril of
any real value to conquer except the Keep, and much to lose, he had wheeled
his army east toward the remnants of the Midland forces. To be sure, the
D'Haran army waited across those mountains to the east and Zedd knew how
formidable they were, but he couldn't fool himself that they stood a chance
against a force as immense as the Imperial Order.
Jagang had left the city in order to go after those D'Haran forces. The
Imperial Order could not win the war by occupying an empty city; they needed
to crush any resistance once and for all so that there would be no people
left who could, by living prosperous, happy, peaceful lives, put the lie to
the Order's teachings.
Now that Jagang had come all the way up through the Midlands, he had
cleaved the New World. Forces had been left all along the route to occupy
cities and towns. Now the main force of the Order would turn its blood lust
east, on a lone D'Hara. By dividing the New World in such a way, Jagang
would be able to more efficiently crush opposition.
Zedd knew that it wasn't for lack of trying that the New World had
given ground. He and Kahlan, among a great many others, had worked
themselves sick, month after month, trying to find a way to stop Ja-gang's
forces.
Zedd clutched his robes at his throat, at the painful memory of such
ferocious fighting, at how nothing had worked against Jagang's numbers, at
the death and dying, at the friends he had lost. It was only a matter of
time until all was lost to the hordes from the Old World.
Richard and Kahlan would not survive such a conquest by the Imperial
Order. Zedd's thin fingers covered his trembling lips at the ghastly thought
of them being lost, too. They were the only family he had left. They were
everything to him.
Zedd felt a crushing wave of hopelessness, and had to sit on the stump
of a log section set outside a shoe shop that had been boarded closed. Once
the Imperial Order finally annihilated all opposition, Ja-gang would return
to take the city and lay siege to the Keep. Sooner or later, he would have
it all.
The future, as Zedd imagined it, seemed to be a world shrouded in the
gray pall of life under the Imperial Order. If the world fell under that
pall, it would probably be a very long time before mankind ever emerged to
live free again. Once liberty was surrendered to tyranny, it could be
smothered for centuries before its flames again sprang to life and
brightened the world.
Zedd hadn't sat for long when he forced himself to his feet. He was
First Wizard. He had been in hopeless straits before and had seen the foe
turned back. There was still the possibility that he and Adie could find
something in the Keep that would aid them, or that they might yet discover
information in the libraries that would give them a valuable advantage.
As long as there was life, they could fight on toward their goal. They
still had the ability to triumph.
He harrumphed to himself. He would triumph.
Zedd was glad that Adie wasn't with him to see him in such a sorry
state that he would have--if even momentarily--considered defeat. Adie would
have never let him hear the end of it, and deservedly so.
He harrumphed again. He was hardly inexperienced, hardly without the
wherewithal to handle challenges that arose. And if there were assassins
about, gifted or not, they would find themselves caught up by one of the
many little surprises he had left around. Very nasty surprises.
Chin up, Zedd smiled to himself as he turned down a narrow alley,
making his way past a patchwork of yards with empty pens that had once held
chickens, geese, ducks, and pigeons. His gaze passed over small back
courtyards, their herbs and flowers growing untended, their wash lines
empty, their wood and other materials stacked to the sides, waiting for
people to return and work them into something useful.
Along the way he stopped in various vegetable gardens, harvesting the
volunteer crops that had sprung up. There was lettuce aplenty, spinach, some
small squash, green tomatoes, and still a few peas. He collected his bounty
in a canvas sack and slung it over a shoulder as he walked the garden plots,
checking on the progress of irregular patches of onions, beets, beans, and
turnips. Still some growing to do, he concluded.
While the vegetables weren't thick from a careful planting, the random
growth in yards all over the city meant that he and Adie would have fresh
vegetables for some time to come. Maybe she might even take to putting some
things up for next winter. They could store root crops in the colder places
in the Keep, and preserve more perishable vegetables. They would have more
food than they could eat.
On his way up the alley, Zedd spied a bush off toward the corner,
sprawled green and lush over a short back fence between two homes. The
blackberry bush was loaded with ripe berries. He paused occasionally to
check up and down the streets beyond while he made a nice-sized pile of the
dark, plump berries in a square of cloth, then tied it up and placed it atop
the heavier goods in his sack.
There were still plenty of ripe berries, and he hated to let them go to
waste, or to the birds, so he worked at filling his pockets. He didn't worry
that it would spoil his dinner; it was a long walk back up the mountain to
the Wizard's Keep, so he could use a snack. Adie was making a thick stew
from cured ham. There was no danger that he would spoil his appetite on mere
berries. She would be pleased by the vegetables he brought and would no
doubt want to add them to the stew straightaway. Adie was a wonderful cook,
although he dared not admit it to her lest she get a big head. Before the
stone bridge, Zedd paused, gazing back down the wide road leading up the
mountainside. Only the wind in the trees and their shimmering leaves created
any sound or movement. For a long moment, though, he stared down at the
empty road.
Finally, he turned back to the bridge that in less than three hundred
paces spanned a chasm with near vertical sides dropping away for thousands
of feet. Clouds far below hung hard against the sheer rock walls. Despite
the countless times he had walked over the stone bridge, it still made him
feel just a little queasy. Without wings, though, there was but this single
way into the Keep--except for the little trick passage he had used as a boy.
Because of their strategic role, Zedd had placed enough snares and
traps along the bridge and the rest of the road up to the Keep that no one
was going to live for more than a few paces once they came close. Not even a
Sister of the Dark could trespass here. A few Sisters had attempted the
impossible, and had paid with their lives.
They would have suspected such webs laid by the First Wizard himself,
and felt some of the warning shields, but no doubt Jagang had given them no
choice in the matter and had sent them to attempt entry, sacrificing their
lives for the greater good of the Order.
Verna had once briefly been taken captive by the dream walker and she
had told Zedd all about the experience in the hope that they might find a
counter, other than swearing loyalty in one's heart to the Lord Rahl and
thereby invoking the protection of the bond. Zedd had tried, but there was
no countermagic he could provide. In the great war, wizards far more
talented than he, and with both sides of the gift, had tried to devise
defenses against dream walkers. Once the dream walker had taken over a
person's mind, there was no defense; you had to do his bidding, regardless
of the cost, even if the cost was your life.
Zedd suspected that for a few, death was a coveted release from the
agony of possession by the dream walker. Suicide was a course blocked by
Jagang; he needed the talents of the Sisters and other gifted. He couldn't
have them all kill themselves for release from the misery of life as his
chattel. But if he sent them to their certain death, such as attempting to
enter the Keep, then they could at last be free of the agony that had become
their life.
Ahead, the Keep towered on the mountainside. The soaring walls of dark
stone, intimidating to most people, offered Zedd the warm sense of home. His
eyes roamed the ramparts, and he remembered strolling there with his wife so
many years ago--a lifetime ago, it seemed. From the towers he had often
looked down at the beautiful sight of Aydindril below. He had once marched
across the bridges and passageways to deliver orders defending the Midlands
from an invasion from D'Hara, led by Darken Rahl's father.
That, too, seemed a lifetime ago. Now Richard, his grandson, was the
Lord Rahl, and had succeeded in uniting most of the Midlands under the rule
of the D'Haran Empire. Zedd shook his head at the wonder of it, at the
thought of how Richard had changed everything. By Richard's hand, Zedd was
now a subject of the D'Haran Empire. What a wonder indeed.
Before he reached the far side of the bridge, Zedd glanced down into
the chasm. Movement caught his attention. Putting his bony fingers on the
rough stone, he leaned out a little for a look. Below, but above the clouds,
he saw two huge birds, black as moonless midnight, gliding along through the
split in the mountain. Zedd had never seen the like of them. He couldn't
imagine what to make of the sight.
When he turned back to the Keep, he thought he saw three more of the
same kind of large black birds flying together, high above the Keep. He
decided that they had to be ravens. Ravens were big. He must simply be
misjudging the distance--probably from lack of food. Concluding that they
had to be ravens, he tried to adjust his estimation of their distance, but
they were already gone. He glanced down, but didn't see the other two,
either.
As he passed under the iron portcullis, feeling the warm embrace of the
Keep's spell, Zedd felt a wave of loneliness. He so missed Erilyn, his
long-dead wife, as well as his long-passed daughter, Richard's mother, and,
dear spirits, he missed Richard. He smiled then, thinking of Richard being
with his own wife, now. It was still sometimes hard for him to think of
Richard as grown into a man. He had had a wondrous time helping to raise
Richard. What a time that had been in his life, off in Westland, away from
the Midlands, away from magic and responsibility, with just that ever
curious boy and a whole world of wonders to explore and show him.
What a time indeed. Inside the Keep, lamps along the wall obediently
sprang to flame as First Wizard Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander made his way along
passageways and through grand rooms, deeper into the immense mountain
fortress. As he passed the webs he'd placed, he checked the texture of their
magic to find that they were undisturbed. He sighed in relief. He didn't
expect that anyone would be foolish enough to try to enter the Keep, but the
world had fools to spare. He didn't really like leaving such dangerous webs
cast all about the place, in addition to the often dangerous shields already
guarding the Keep, but he dared not relax his guard.
As he passed a long side table in a towering gathering hall, Zedd, as
he had done since he was a boy, ran his finger along the smooth groove in
the edge of the variegated chocolate-brown marble top. He stopped, frowning
down at the table, and realized that it contained something he suddenly felt
the want of: a ball of fine black cord left there years ago to tie ribbons
and other decorations on the lamp brackets in the gathering hall to mark the
harvest festival.
Sure enough, in the center drawer, he found the ball of fine cord. He
snatched it up and slipped it into a pocket long emptied of its load of
berries. From the wall bracket beside the table, he lifted a wand with six
small bells. The wand, one of hundreds if not thousands throughout the Keep,
was once used to summon servants. He sighed inwardly. It had been decades
since servants and their families last lived in the Wizard's Keep. He
remembered their children running and playing in the halls. He remembered
the joy of laughter echoing throughout the Keep, bringing life to the place.
Zedd told himself that one day children would again run and laugh in
the halls. Richard and Kahlan's children. Zedd's broad smile stretched his
cheeks.
There were windows and openings in the stone that let light spill into
many halls and rooms, but there were other places less well lit. Zedd found
one of those darker places that was dim enough to satisfy him. He stretched
a piece of the black cord, strung with one of the bells, across the doorway,
winding it around coarse stone molding to each side. Moving deeper through
the labyrinth of halls and passage-ways, he stopped and strung more strings
with a bell at places where it would be hard to see. He had to collect
several more of the servant wands for a supply of bells.
Although there were shields of magic laced everywhere, there was no
telling what powers some of the Sisters of the Dark possessed. They would be
looking for magic, not bells. It couldn't hurt to take the extra precaution.
Zedd made mental notes of where he strung the fine black cord-- he
would have to let Adie know. He doubted, though, that with her gifted sight
she would need the warning. He was sure that with her blind eyes she could
see better than anyone.
Following the wonderful aroma of ham stew, Zedd made his way to the
comfortable room lined with bookshelves they used most of the time. Adie had
hung spices to dry from the low beams carved with ancient designs. A leather
couch sat before a broad fireplace and comfortable chairs beside a
silver-inlaid table placed in front of a diamond-patterned leaded window
with a breathtaking view overlooking Aydindril.
The sun was setting, leaving the city below bathed in a warm light. It
almost looked like it always did, except there was no telltale smoke curling
up from cooking fires.
Zedd set his burlap sack loaded with his harvest on piles of books atop
a round mahogany table behind the couch. He shuffled closer to the fire, all
the while taking deep breaths to inhale the intoxicating aroma of the stew.
"Adie," he called, "this smells delightful! Have you looked outside
today? I saw the oddest birds."
He smiled as he inhaled another whiff.
"Adie--I think it must be done by now," he called toward the doorway to
the side pantry room. "I think we ought to taste it, at least. Can't hurt to
check, you know."
Zedd glanced back over his shoulder. "Adie? Are you listening to me?"
He went to the doorway and peered into the pantry, but it was empty.
"Adie?" he called down the stairs at the back of the pantry. "Are you
down there?"
Zedd's mouth twisted with discontentment when she didn't answer.
"Adie?" he called again. "Bags, woman, where are you?"
He turned back, peering at the stew bubbling in the kettle hung on the
crane over the fire. Zedd scooped up a long wooden spoon from a pantry
cupboard.
Spoon in hand, he stopped and leaned back toward the stairs. "Take your
time, Adie. I'll just be up here . .. reading."
Zedd grinned and hurried for the stew.
Richard rose up in a rush when he saw Cara marching up a ravine toward
camp, pushing ahead of her a man Richard vaguely recognized. In the failing
light, he couldn't make out the man's face. Richard scanned the surrounding
flat washes, rocky hills, and steep tree-covered slopes beyond, but didn't
see anyone else.
Friedrich was off to the south and Tom to the west, checking the
surrounding country, as Cara had been, to be sure there was no one about and
that it was a safe place to spend the night; they were exhausted from
picking a sinuous route through the increasingly rugged country. Cara had
been checking north--the direction they were headed and the direction
Richard considered potentially the most dangerous. Jennsen turned from the
animals, waiting to see who the Mord-Sith had with her.
Once on his feet, Richard wished he hadn't gotten up quite so
quickly--doing so made him light-headed. He couldn't seem to shake the odd,
disconnected sensation he felt, as if he were watching someone else react,
talk, move. When he concentrated, forcing himself to focus his attention,
the feeling would sometimes drift at least partly away and he would begin to
wonder if it was only his imagination.
Kahlan's hand slipped up on his arm, gripping him as if she thought he
might fall.
"Are you all right?" she whispered.
He nodded as he watched Cara and the man as he also kept an eye on the
surrounding countryside. By the end of their ride earlier that afternoon to
discuss the book, Kahlan had become even more worried about him. They were
both troubled about what he'd read, but Kahlan was far more concerned, at
the moment, anyway, about him.
Richard suspected that he might be coming down with a slight fever.
That would explain why he was feeling so cold when everyone else was hot.
From time to time, Kahlan would feel his forehead or place the back of her
hand against his cheek. Her touch warmed his heart; she ignored his smiles
as she fretted over him. She thought that he might be slightly feverish.
Once she had Jennsen feel his forehead to see if she thought he might be
warmer than he should be. Jennsen, too, thought that, if he did have a
fever, it was minor. Cara, so far, had been satisfied by Kahlan's report
that he didn't feel feverish, and hadn't deemed it necessary to see for
herself.
A fever was just about the last thing Richard needed. There were
important... important, something. He couldn't seem to recall at the moment.
He concentrated on trying to remember the young man's name, or at least
where he'd seen him before.
The last rays of the setting sun cast a pink glow across the mountains
to the east. The closer hills were dimming to a soft gray in the gathering
dusk. As darkness approached, the low fire was beginning to tint everything
close around it a warm yellow-orange. Richard had kept the cook fire small,
not wanting it to signal their location any more than necessary.
"Lord Rahl," the man said in a reverent tone as he stepped into camp.
He dipped his head forward in a hesitant bow, apparently not sure if it was
proper to bow or not. "It's an honor to see you again."
He was perhaps a couple of years younger than Richard, with curly black
hair that brushed the broad shoulders of his buckskin tunic. He wore a long
knife at his belt but no sword. His ears stuck out to the sides of his head
as if he were straining to listen to every little sound. Richard imagined
that as a boy he'd probably endured a lot of taunts about his ears, but now
that he was a man his ears made him look rather intent and serious. As
muscular as the man was, Richard doubted that he still had to contend with
taunts.
"I'm . .. I'm sorry, but I can't quite seem to recall..."
"Oh, no, you wouldn't remember me, Lord Rahl. I was only--"
"Sabar," Richard said as it came to him. "Sabar. You loaded the
furnaces in Priska's foundry, back in Altur'Rang."
Sabar beamed. "That's right. I can't believe you remember me."
Sabar had been one of the men at the foundry able to have work because
of the supplies Richard hauled to Priska when no one else could. Sabar had
understood how hard Priska worked just to keep his foundry alive under the
oppressive, endless, and contradictory mandates of the Order. Sabar had been
there the day the statue Richard carved had been unveiled; he had seen it
before it was destroyed. He had been there at the beginning of the
revolution in Altur'Rang, fighting close alongside Victor, Priska, and all
the others who had seized the moment when it was upon them. Sabar had fought
to help gain freedom for himself, his friends, and for his city.
That had been a day everything had changed.
Even though this man, like many others, had been a subject of the
Imperial Order--one of the enemy--he wanted to live his own life under just
laws, rather than under the dictates of despots who extinguished any hope of
bettering oneself under the crushing burden of the cruel illusion of a
greater good.
Richard noticed, then, that everyone was standing in tense
anticipation, as if they had expected this to be trouble.
Richard smiled at Cara. "It's all right. I know him."
"So he told me," Cara said. She put a hand on Sabar's shoulder and
pushed him down. "Have a seat."
"Yes," Richard said, glad to see that Cara had been fairly amiable
about it. "Sit down and tell us why you're here."
"Nicci sent me."
Richard rose again in a rush, Kahlan coming up right beside him.
"Nicci? We're on our way to meet her."
Sabar nodded, rising into a half crouch, seeming not to be sure if he
was supposed to stand, since Richard and Kahlan had, or stay seated
Cara hadn't sat down; she stood behind Sabar like an executioner. Cara
had been there when the revolution in Altur'Rang had started and might
remember Sabar, but that would make no difference. Cara trusted no one where
the safety of Richard and Kahlan was concerned.
Richard gestured for Sabar to remain seated. "Where is she," Richard
asked as he and Kahlan sat down again, sharing a seat on a bedroll. "Is she
coming soon?"
"Nicci said to tell you that she waited as long as she could, but there
have been some urgent developments and she could wait no longer."
Richard let out a disappointed sigh. "Some things came up for us, too."
Kahlan had been captured and taken to the Pillars of Creation as bait to
lure Richard into a trap. Rather than go into all that, he kept the story
short and to the point. "We were trying to get to Nicci, but needed to go
elsewhere. It was unavoidable."
Sabar nodded. "I was worried when she returned to us and said that you
had not shown up at your meeting place, but she told us that she was sure
you were busy taking care of something important and that was the reason you
had not come.
"Victor Cascella, the blacksmith, was very worried, too, when Nicci
told us this. He was thinking you would be returning with Nicci. He said
that other places he knows, places he and Priska have dealings with for
supplies and such, are on the verge of revolt. These people have heard about
Altur'Rang, how the Order has been overthrown there, and how people are
beginning to prosper. He said that he knows free men in these places who
struggle to survive under the oppression of the Order as we once did, and
they hunger to be free. They want Victor's help.
"Some of the Brothers in the Fellowship of Order who escaped from
Altur'Rang have gone to these other places to insure that such revolt does
not spread there. Their cruelty in punishing any they suspect of
insurrection is costing the lives of many people, both the innocent and
those valuable to the cause of overthrowing the Imperial Order.
"In order to insure their control of the gears of governance and to
ready the Order's defense against the spread of the revolt, Brothers of the
Order have gone to all the important cities, Surely, some of these priests
have also gone to report to Jagang the fall of Altur'Rang, of the loss of so
many officials in the fighting there, and of the deaths of Brothers Narev
and many of his close circle of disciples."
"Jagang already knows of the death of Brother Narev," Jennsen said,
offering him a cup of water.
Sabar smiled his satisfaction at her news. He thanked her for the
water, then leaned forward toward Richard and Kahlan as he went on with his
story.
"Priska thinks the Order will want to sweep away the success of the
revolt in Altur'Rang--that they can't afford to let it stand. He said that
instead of worrying about spreading the revolt, we must prepare, make
defenses, and have every man stand ready because the Order will return with
the intent of slaughtering every last person in Altur'Rang."
Sabar hesitated, clearly worried about Priska's warning. "Victor,
though, said we should hammer the iron while it is hot and create a just and
secure future for ourselves, rather than wait for the Order to gather their
strength to deny us that future. He says that if the revolt is spreading
everywhere, the Order will not so easily stamp it out."
Richard ran a weary hand across his face. "Victor is right. If those in
Altur'Rang try to sit alone as a singular place of freedom in the heart of
hostile enemy territory, the Order will sweep in and cut out that heart. The
Order can't survive on its perverted ideals and they know it; that's why
they must use force to sustain their beliefs. Without that bully of force,
the Order will crumble.
"Jagang spent twenty years creating a system of roads to knit a diverse
and fractured Old World together into the Imperial Order. That was but part
of the means of how he succeeded. Many resisted the rantings of his priests.
With roads to swiftly respond to any dissent, though, Jagang was able to
react quickly, to sweep in and kill those who openly opposed his new Order.
"More importantly, after eliminating those who resisted the Order's
teachings, he filled the minds of children, who didn't know any better, with
blind faith in those teachings, turning them into zealots eager to die for
what they were taught was a noble cause--sacrifice to some all-consuming
greater good.
"Those young men, their minds twisted with the teachings of the Order,
are now off to the north conquering the New World, butchering any who will
not take up their altruistic tenets.
"But while Jagang and that vast army are to the north, that strength
there leaves the Order weak here. That weakness is our opportunity and we
must capitalize on it. Now, while Jagang and his men are absent, those same
roads he built down here will be our means of rapidly spreading the struggle
for freedom far and wide.
"The torch of freedom has been lit by the will of those like you, those
in Altur'Rang who seized liberty for themselves. The flames of that torch
must be held high, giving others the chance to see its light. If hidden and
insulated, such flames will be extinguished by the Order. There may never be
another chance in our lifetimes, or our children's lifetimes, to seize
control of our own lives. That torch must be carried to other places."
Sabar smiled, filled with quiet pride that he had been a part of it all
coming to be. "I know that Victor would like for others, like Priska, to be
reminded of such things, of what the Lord Rahl would say about what we must
do. Victor wants to talk to you before he goes to these places to 'pump the
bellows,' as he put it. Victor said that he awaits your word on how you
would move next, on how best to 'put the white-hot iron to them'--again, his
words."
"So Nicci sent you to find me."
"Yes. I was happy to go to you when she asked me. Victor will be happy,
too, not only that you are well but to hear what the Lord Rahl would say to
him."
While Victor was awaiting word, Richard also knew that absent such
word, Victor would act. The revolution did not revolve around Richard--it
couldn't to be successful--but around the hunger of people to have their
lives back. Still, Richard needed to help coordinate the spreading revolt in
order to be sure it was as effective as possible, not just at bringing
freedom to those who sought it, but at crumbling the foundation of the Order
in the Old World. Only if they were successful in toppling the rule of the
Order in the Old World would Jagang's attention--and many of his men--be
pulled away from conquering the New World.
Jagang intended to conquer the New World by first dividing it. Richard
had to do the same if he was to succeed. Only dividing the Order's forces
could defeat it.
Richard knew that with everyone evacuated from Aydindril, the Imperial
Order would now turn its swords on D'Hara. Despite the competence of the
D'Haran troops, they would be overwhelmed by the numbers that Jagang would
throw at them. If the Order was not diverted from its cause, or at least
divided into smaller forces, D'Hara would fall under the shadow of the
Order. The D'Haran Empire, forged to unite the New World against tyranny,
would end before it had really gotten started.
Richard had to get back to Victor and Nicci so that they could all
continue what they had begun--devising the most effective strategy to
overthrow the Imperial Order.
But they were running out of time to resolve another problem, a problem
they didn't yet understand.
"I'm glad you found us, Sabar. You can tell Victor and Nicci that we
need to see to something first, but as soon as we do, we'll be able to help
them with their plans."
Sabar looked relieved. "Everyone will be happy to hear this."
Sabar hesitated, then tilted his head, gesturing north. "Lord Rahl,
when I came to find you, following the directions Nicci gave me, I went past
the area where she was to meet with you, and then I continued coming south."
Worry stole into his expression. "Not many days ago, I came to a place,
miles wide, that was dead."
Richard looked up. He realized that his headache seemed to be suddenly
gone. "What do you mean, dead?"
Sabar waved his hand out toward the evening gloom. "The area where I
was traveling was much like this place; there were some trees, clumps of
grass, thickets of brush." His voice lowered. "But then I came to a place
where everything that grew ended. All at the same place. There was nothing
but rock beyond. Nicci had not told me that I would come to such a place. I
admit, I was afraid."
Richard glanced to his right--to the east--to the mountains that lay
beyond. "How long did this dead place last?"
"I walked, leaving life behind, and I thought I might be walking into
the underworld itself." Sabar looked away from Richard's eyes. "Or into the
jaws of some new weapon the Order had created to destroy us all.
"I came to be very afraid and I was going to turn back. But then I
thought about how the Order made me afraid my whole life, and I didn't like
that feeling. Worse, I thought about how I would stand before Nicci and tell
her I turned around rather than go to Lord Rahl as she asked of me, and that
thought made me ashamed, so I went on. In several miles I came again to
growing things." He let out a breath. "I was greatly relieved, and then I
felt a little foolish that I had been afraid."
Two. That now made two of the strange boundaries.
"I've been to places like that, Sabar, and I can tell you that I, too,
have been afraid."
Sabar broke into a grin. "Then I was not so foolish to be afraid."
"Not foolish at all. Could you tell if this dead area was extensive?
Could you tell if it was more than just a patch of open rock in that one
place? Could you see if it ran in a line, ran in any direction in
particular?"
"It was like you say, like a line." Sabar flicked his hand toward the
east. "It came down out of the far mountains, north of that depression." He
held his hand flat like a cleaver, and sliced it downward in the other
direction. "It ran off to the southwest, into that wasteland."
Toward the Pillars of Creation.
Kahlan leaned close and spoke under her breath. "That would be almost
parallel to the boundary we crossed not far back to the south. Why would
there be two boundaries so close together? That makes no sense."
"I don't know," Richard whispered to her. "Maybe whatever the boundary
was protecting was so dangerous that whoever placed it feared that one might
not be enough."
Kahlan rubbed her upper arms but didn't comment. By the look on her
face, Richard knew how she felt about such a notion--especially considering
that those boundaries were now down.
"Anyway," Sabar said with a self-conscious shrug, "I was happy I did
not turn back, or I would have had to face Nicci after she had asked me to
help Lord Rahl--my friend Richard."
Richard smiled. "I'm glad, too, Sabar. I don't think that place you
went through is a danger any longer, at least not a danger the way it was
once."
Jennsen could contain her curiosity no longer. "Who is this Nicci?"
"Nicci is a sorceress," Richard said. "She used to be a Sister of the
Dark."
Jennsen's eyebrows went up. "Used to?"
Richard nodded. "She worked to further Jagang's cause, but she finally
came to see how wrong she had been and joined our side." It was a story he
didn't really feel like going into. "She now fights for us. Her help has
been invaluable."
Jennsen leaned in, even more astonished. "But can you trust someone
like that, someone who had labored on behalf of Jagang? Worse, a Sister of
the Dark? Richard, I've been with some of those women, I know how ruthless
they are. They may have to do as Jagang makes them, but they're devoted to
the Keeper of the underworld. Do you really think you can trust with your
life that she will not betray you?"
Richard looked Jennsen in the eye. "I trust you with a knife while I
sleep."
Jennsen sat back up. She smiled, more out of embarrassment than
anything else, Richard thought. "I guess I see your point."
"What else did Nicci say," Kahlan asked, keen to get back to the matter
at hand.
"Only that I must go in her place and meet you," Sabar said.
Richard knew that Nicci was being cautious. She didn't want to tell the
young man too much in case he was caught.
"How did she know where I was?"
"She said that she was able to tell where you were by magic. Nicci is
as powerful with magic as she is beautiful."
Sabar said this in a tone of awe. He didn't know the half of it. Nicci
was one of the most powerful sorceresses ever to have lived. Sabar didn't
know that when Nicci was laboring toward the ends sought by the Order, she
was known as Death's Mistress.
Richard surmised that Nicci had somehow used the bond to the Lord Rahl
to find him. That bond was loyalty sworn in the heart, not by rote, and its
power protected those so sworn from the dream walker entering their minds.
Full-blooded D'Harans, like Cara, could tell through the bond where the Lord
Rahl was. Kahlan had confided to him that she found it unnerving the way
Cara always knew where Richard was. Nicci wasn't D'Haran, but she was a
sorceress and she was bonded to Richard, so she might have been able to
manipulate that bond to tell where he was.
"Sabar, Nicci must have sent you to us for a reason," Richard said,
"other than to say that she couldn't wait for us at our meeting place."
"Yes, of course," Sabar said as he nodded hastily, as if chagrined to
have to be reminded. "When I asked her what I was to say to you, she told me
that she had put it all in a letter." Sabar opened the leather flap of the
pouch at his belt. "She said that when she realized how far away you really
were, she was distraught and couldn't take the time to journey to you. She
told me that it was important for me to be sure I found you and gave you her
letter. She said the letter would explain why she could not wait."
With one finger and a thumb, Sabar lifted out the letter, looking as if
he were handling a deadly viper instead of a small roll sealed with red wax.
"Nicci told me that this is dangerous," he explained, looking up into
Richard's eyes. "She said that if anyone but you opened it, I should not be
standing too close or I would die with them."
Sabar carefully laid the rolled letter on Richard's palm. It warmed
appreciably in his hand. The red wax brightened, as if lit by a ray of
sunlight even though it was getting dark. The glow spread from the wax to
envelop the whole length of the rolled letter. Fine cracks raced all across
the red wax, like autumn ice on a pond breaking up under the weight of a
foot placed on it. The wax suddenly shattered and crumbled away.
Sabar swallowed. "I hate to think of what would have happened had
anyone but you tried to open it."
Jennsen leaned in again. "Was that magic?"
"Must have been," Richard told her as he started to unroll the letter.
"But I saw it fall apart," she said in a confidential tone.
"Did you see anything else?"
"No, it just all of a sudden crumbled."
With a thumb and finger, Richard lifted some of the disintegrated wax
from his palm. "She probably put a web of magic around the letter and keyed
that spell to my touch. If anyone else had tried to break that web to open
the letter it would have ignited the spell. I guess that my touch unlocked
the seal. You saw the result of the magic--the broken seal--not the magic
itself."
"Oh, wait!" Sabar smacked his forehead with the flat of his palm. "What
am I thinking? I'm supposed to give you this, too."
Shrugging the straps off his shoulders and down his arms, he pulled his
pack around onto his lap. He quickly undid the leather thongs and reached
inside, then carefully lifted out something wrapped in black quilted
material. It was only about a foot tall but not very big around. By the way
Sabar handled it, it appeared to be somewhat heavy.
Sabar set the wrapped object on the ground, upright, in front of the
fire. "Nicci told me that I should give this to you, that the letter would
explain it."
Jennsen leaned in a little, fascinated by the mystery of the tightly
wrapped object. "What is it?"
Sabar shrugged. "Nicci didn't tell me." He made a face that suggested
he was somewhat uncomfortable with the way he was in the dark about much of
the mission he'd been sent on. "When Nicci looks at you and tells you to do
something, it goes out of your head to ask questions."
Richard smiled to himself as he began to unroll the letter. He knew all
too well what Sabar meant.
"Did Nicci say anything about who could unwrap that thing?"
"No, Lord Rahl. She just said to give it to you, that the letter would
explain it."
"If it had a web around it, like the letter, she would have warned
you." Richard looked up. "Cara," he said, gesturing at the bundled package
sitting before the fire, "why don't you unwrap it while Kahlan and I read
the letter."
As Cara sat cross-legged on the ground and started working on the knots
in the leather thongs around the black quilted wrap, Richard held the letter
sideways a bit so that Kahlan could read it silently along with him.
Dear Richard and Kahlan,
I am sorry that I cannot tell you everything right now that I would
have you know, but there are urgent matters I must see to and I dare not
delay. Jagang has initiated something I considered impossible. Through his
ability as a dream walker, he has forced Sisters of the Dark he controls to
attempt to create weapons out of people, as was done during the great war.
This is dangerous enough in itself, but because Jagang does not have the
gift, his understanding of such things is very crude. He is a blundering
bull trying to use his horns to knit lace. They are using the lives of
wizards as the fodder for his experiments. I don't yet know the exact extent
of their success, but I fear to discover the results. More of this in a
moment.
First, the object I sent. When 1 picked up your trail and began
tracking it to where we were to meet, I discovered this. I believe you have
already come across it because it has been touched by a principal involved
in the matter or involved with you.
The object is a warning beacon. It has been activated--not by this
touch, but by events. I cannot overstate the danger it represents.
Such objects could only be made by the wizards of ancient times; the
creation of such an object required both Additive and Subtractive Magic, and
required the gift of both to be innate. Even then, they are so rare that I
have never actually seen one.
I have, however, read about them down in the vaults at the Palace of
the Prophets. Such warning beacons are kept viable by a link to the dead
wizard who created them.
Richard sat back and let out a troubled breath. "How can such a link be
possible?" Kahlan asked.
He hardly had to read between the lines to be able to tell that Nicci
was warning him in the gravest possible terms.
"It has to be linked somehow to the underworld," Richard whispered
back.
Little points of firelight danced in her green eyes as she stared at
him.
Kahlan glanced again at Cara as she worked at the knots, pulling off
one of the leather thongs around an object linked to a dead wizard in the
underworld. Kahlan held up the edge of the letter as she urgently read along
with him.
From what I know of such warning beacons, they monitor powerful and
vital protective shields created to seal away something profoundly
dangerous. They are paired. The first beacon is always amber. It is meant to
be a warning to the one who caused the breach of the seal. The touch of a
principal or one involved with a principal kindles it so it may be
recognized for what it is and serve as it was intended--as a warning to
those involved. Only after alerting the one it is meant to warn can it be
destroyed. I send it to be absolutely certain you have seen it.
The precise nature of the second beacon is unknown to me, but that
beacon is meant for the one able to replace the seal.
I don't know the nature of the seal or what it was protecting. Without
doubt, though, the seal has been breached.
The source of the breach, while not the specific cause activating this
beacon, is self-evident.
"Oh, now wait a minute," Cara said, standing, backing away as if she
had released a deadly plague from the black quilting, "it isn't my fault
this time." She pointed down at it. "You told me to, this time."
The translucent statue Cara had touched before now stood in the center
of its unfolded black quilted wrapping.
It was the same statue: a statue of Kahlan.
The statue's left arm was pressed to its side, the right arm was
raised, pointing. The statue, in an hourglass shape, looked as if it were
made of transparent amber, allowing them to see inside.
Sand trickled out of the top half of the hourglass, through the
narrowed waist, into the bottom of the full dress of the Mother Confessor.
The sand was still trickling down, just as it had been the last time
Richard had seen the thing. At that time, the top half had been more full
than the bottom half. Now, the top held less sand than the bottom.
Kahlan's face had gone ashen.
When he'd first seen it, Richard wouldn't have needed Nicci to tell him
how dangerous such a thing was. He hadn't wanted any of them to touch it.
When they had first come across it, in a recess of rock beside the trail,
looking almost like part of the rock itself, the thing was opaque, with a
dull, dark surface, yet it was clearly recognizable as Kahlan. It was lying
on its side.
Cara wasn't pleased to find such a thing and didn't want to leave a
representation of Kahlan lying about for anyone to find and to pick up for
who-knew-what. Cara snatched it up, then, even though Richard started to
yell at her to leave such a thing be.
When she picked it up, it started turning translucent.
In a panic, Cara set it back down.
That was when the right arm had lifted and pointed east.
That was when they could begin to see through the thing, to see the
sand inside trickling down.
The implied danger of the sand running out had them all upset. Cara
wanted to pick it up again and turn it over, to stop the sand from falling.
Richard, not knowing anything about such an object and doubting that so
simple a solution would have any beneficial effect, hadn't allowed Cara to
touch it again. He had piled rocks and brush around it so no one else would
know it was there. Obviously, that hadn't worked.
He knew now that Cara's touch had nothing to do with what was
happening, except to initiate the warning, so he thought to confirm his
original belief. "Cara, put it down."
"Down?"
"On its side--like you wanted to do the last time--to see if that will
stop the sand."
Cara stared at him for a moment and then used the toe of her boot to
tip the figure over on its side.
The sand continued to run as if it still stood upright.
"How can the sand do that?" Jennsen asked, sounding quite shaken. "How
can the sand still fall--how can it fall sideways?"
"You can see it?" Kahlan asked. "You can see the sand falling?"
Jennsen nodded. "I sure can, and I have to tell you, it's giving my
goose bumps goose bumps."
Richard could only stare at her staring at the statue of Kahlan lying
on its side. If nothing else, the sand running sideways through the statue
had to be magic. Jennsen was a pillar of Creation, a hole in the world, a
pristinely ungifted offspring of Darken Rahl. She should not be able to see
magic.
And yet, she was seeing it.
"I have to agree with the young lady," Sabar said. "That's even more
frightening than those big black birds that I've seen circling for the last
week."
Kahlan straightened. "You been seeing--"
When he heard Tom's urgent warning yell, Richard rose up in a rush,
drawing his sword in one swift movement. The unique sound of ringing steel
filled the night air.
The magic did not come out with the sword.
KahIan ducked to the side, out of harm's way, as Richard pulled his
sword free. The distinctive ring of steel being drawn in anger fused with
Tom's warning yell still echoing through the surrounding hills to send a
flash of fright tingling across her flesh. As she stared out into the empty
blackness of the surrounding night, her instinct was to reach for her own
sword, but she had packed it in the wagon rather than wear it, so as not to
raise suspicions about who they might be--women in the Old World did not
carry weapons.
By the light of the fire, Kahlan could clearly see Richard's face. She
had seen him draw the Sword of Truth countless times and in a variety of
situations, from that very first time when Zedd, after giving him the sword,
commanded him to draw it and Richard tentatively pulled it from its
scabbard, to times he pulled it free in the heat of battle, to times like
this when he drew it suddenly in defense.
When Richard drew the sword, he was also drawing its attendant magic.
That was the function of the weapon; the magic had not been created simply
to defend the sword's true owner, but, more importantly, to be a projection
of his intent. The Sword of Truth was not even really a talisman, but rather
a tool, of the Seeker of Truth.
The true weapon was the rightly named Seeker who wielded the sword. The
sword's magic answered to him.
Each and every one of the times Richard had drawn the sword, Kahlan had
seen that magic dancing dangerously in his gray eyes.
This was the first time he had drawn the sword that she didn't see the
magic in his eyes; the raptor's glare was pure Richard.
While seeing him draw the sword without seeing its concomitant magic
evident in his eyes shocked her, it seemed to surprise Richard even more.
For an instant he hesitated, as if mentally stumbling.
Before they had time to even wonder what had prompted Tom's warning
yell, shadowy shapes slipping through the cover of the nearby trees suddenly
stormed out of the darkness and into their midst. The sudden sound and fury
of bloodcurdling cries filled the night air as men rampaged into the camp,
lit at last by firelight.
They didn't appear to be soldiers--they weren't wearing uniforms-- and
they weren't attacking as soldiers would, with weapons drawn. Kahlan didn't
see any of the men brandishing swords or axes or even knives.
Weapons or not, there were a lot of men and they yelled fierce battle
cries as if they intended nothing short of bloody murder. She knew, though,
that the sudden shock of deafening noise was a tactic designed to render the
intended target powerless with fright, making them easier to cut down. She
knew because she used such tactics herself.
Blade in hand, Richard was fully in his element; focused, resolute,
ruthlessly committed--even without his sword's attendant magic.
As assailants charged in, the sword, driven by Richard's own wrath,
flashed through the air, a flash of crimson light from the fire's flames
reflected along the blade's length, lending it a fleeting stain of red. In
that charged moment of attack met, there was a split second when Kahlan
feared that without the sword's magic, it all might go terribly wrong.
In an instant, the camp that had been so quietly tense became
pandemonium. Although the attackers weren't dressed like soldiers, they were
all big and as they swept in there was no doubt whatsoever as to their
hostile intent.
A man rushing onward threw his arms up to seize Richard before his
sword could be brought to bear. The sword's tip whistled as it came around,
driven by deadly commitment. The blade severed one of the man's raised arms
before exploding through his skull. The air above the fire filled with a
spray of blood, bone, and brain. Another man lunged. Richard's sword ripped
through his chest. In the space of two blinks, two men were dead.
The magic at last seemed to slam into Richard's eyes, as if finally
catching up with his intent.
Kahlan couldn't make sense of what the men were doing. They attacked
without weapons drawn, but they seemed no less fierce for it. Their speed,
numbers, and size, and the angry look of them, were enough to make most
anyone tremble in fright.
From the darkness, more men rushed in on them. Cara stepped into the
path of the attack, lashing out with her Agiel. Men cried out in horrifying
pain when her weapon made contact, causing hesitation among the attackers.
Sabar, knife to hand, tumbled to the ground with one of the men who had
seized him from behind. Jennsen ducked away from another man snatching for
her hair. As she spun away from him, she slashed his face with her knife.
His cries joined a strident chorus of others.
Kahlan realized that it wasn't just men yelling, but the horses were
also screaming in fright. Cara's Agiel against a bull neck brought a
terrifying shriek. Men yelled with effort and shouted orders that were cut
off abruptly as Richard's sword tore through them. All the yelling seemed
directed at the task of overwhelming the four of them.
Kahlan understood, then, what was going on. This was not an attempt to
kill, but to capture. For these men, killing would be a great mercy compared
to what they intended.
Two of the burly men dove across the fire, arms spread wide as if to
tackle Richard and Kahlan. Cara reached out and seized a fistful of shirt,
abruptly spinning one of the two around. She drove her Agiel into his gut,
dropping him to his knees. The other man unexpectedly encountered Richard's
sword thrust straight in with formidable muscle driving it. The scream of
mortal pain was brief before the sword slashed his throat. Cara, standing
above the man on his knees, pressed her Agiel to his chest and gave it a
twist that dropped him instantly.
Already, Richard was leaping over the fire to penetrate into the brunt
of the attack. As his boots landed with a thud, his sword cut the man atop
Sabar nearly in two, spilling his viscera across the ground.
The man Jennsen had slashed rose up only to be met by her knife driven
by desperate fright. She jumped back as he tumbled forward, clutching the
base of his throat where she had severed his windpipe. Cara snagged the man
Jennsen didn't see going for her back. The Mord-Sith, her face a picture of
savage resolve, held her Agiel to his throat, following him to the ground as
he choked on his own blood.
Then, among the men Richard ripped into, Kahlan saw the knives coming
out. The men abandoned their failed attempt to bring him down by grabbing
and overpowering him, and decided, instead, to knife him. If anything, the
threat of the knives served only to further unleash Richard's fury. By the
look in his eyes, the sword's magic seemed to be fully engaged in the
battle.
For an instant, Kahlan stood transfixed by the sight of Richard so
ruthlessly committed to self-defense that the act of killing became a
graceful manifestation of art--a dance with death. Compared with Richard's
fluid movements, the men blundered like bulls. Without wasted motion,
Richard slipped among them as if they were statues, his sword delivering
unrestrained violence. Each thrust met a vital area of the enemy. Each swing
sliced through flesh and bone. Each turn met an attack and crushed it. There
was no lost opportunity, no slash that missed, no thrust gone wide, no
bobble that only slightly wounded. Each time he spun past the thrust of a
blade, met a rush, or turned to a new attack, he cut without mercy.
Kahlan was furious that she didn't have her sword. There was no telling
how many more men there were. She knew all too well what it was like to be
helpless and overwhelmed by a gang of men. She started edging toward the
wagon.
Jennsen and Sabar were both tackled by a burly man diving in out of the
darkness. As they hit the ground, the man landed atop them, knocking the
wind from them. His big hands pinned their wrists to the ground, keeping
their knives at bay.
Richard's blade swept past with lightning speed, slicing across the
man's back, severing his spine. Richard went to a knee as he turned,
whipping the sword around to impale another attacker rushing in at a dead
run, trying to get to Richard before he could recover. The look on the man's
face was a picture of horrified surprise as he ran instead onto Richard's
sword, running it into his own chest up to the hilt. The heavy man atop
Jennsen and Sabar convulsed, unable to draw a breath, as they threw him off.
Richard, still on one knee, yanked the sword free as the mortally wounded
man fell past him.
As another man rushed into camp, looking around, trying to get his
bearings, Cara slammed her Agiel against his neck. As he crumbled, she drove
her elbow up to smash the face of a man following the first in, trying to
grab her from behind while she was occupied. Crying out, his hands covered
crushed bone and gushing blood. She spun and kicked him between the legs. As
he fell forward, his hands going to his groin, she broke his jaw with her
knee, turned, and dropped a third man by slamming her Agiel to his chest.
Another attacker threw himself at Sabar, knocking him back. Sabar
lashed out with his knife, making solid contact. Another man saw the opening
and snatched up Nicci's letter lying on the ground. Kahlan dove for the
letter in his fist, but missed as he yanked his hand back before dashing
away. Jennsen blocked his escape. He straight-armed her as he charged past.
Jennsen was knocked reeling, but came around to bury her knife between his
shoulder blades.
Jennsen managed to keep hold of her knife, twisting it forcefully, as
the man arched his back with a gasp of pain and then a bellow of anger that
withered to a wet burble before it was fully out of his lungs. Jenn-sen's
knife had found his heart. He staggered, stumbled, and fell onto the fire.
The flames whooshed to life as his clothing ignited. Kahlan tried to snatch
the letter from his fist as he writhed in horrifying pain, but, with the
intensity of the heat, she couldn't get close enough.
It was already too late, though; the letter she and Richard had only
had a chance to partially read flared briefly before transforming to black
ash that disintegrated and lifted skyward in the roar of flames.
Kahlan covered her mouth and nose, gagging on the stench of burning
hair and flesh as she was driven back by the heat. Though it seemed like
hours of fighting, the assault had only just begun and already men lay dead
everywhere as yet more of the big men joined the attack.
As she recoiled from the flames and her futile attempt to recover the
lost letter, Kahlan turned again toward the wagon, toward her sword.
She looked up and saw a man who seemed as big as a mountain charging
right at her, blocking her way. He grinned at seeing that he had run down a
woman without a weapon.
Beyond the man, Kahlan saw Richard. Their eyes met. He had taken his
sword to the bulk of the attack, trying to cut it down before it could get
to the rest of them, trying to end it before harm could get to any of the
rest of them.
He couldn't be everywhere at once.
He wasn't close enough to get to her in time. That didn't stop him from
trying. Even as he did, Kahlan discounted the attempt. He was too far away.
The effort was futile.
Looking into the eyes of the man she loved more than life itself, she
saw his pure rage; she knew that Richard was seeing a face that showed
nothing: a Confessor's face, as her mother had taught her. And then the
racing enemy came between them, blocking their sight of one another.
Kahlan's vision focused on the man bearing down on her. His arms lifted
like a bear lost in a mad charge. His teeth were gritted with determination.
A grimace twisted his face in his wild effort to reach her before she could
dodge to the side, before she had a chance to escape.
She knew he was too close for her to have that chance and so she didn't
waste any effort in a useless attempt.
This one had made it past the killing. He had avoided Jennsen and
Sabar. He had figured his attack to skirt Richard's blade while making it
past Cara's Agiel as she turned to another man. He hadn't charged in madly
like the rest; he had delayed just enough to time his onslaught perfectly.
This one knew he was on the verge of having what he sought.
He was far less than a heartbeat away, plunging toward her at full
speed.
Kahlan could hear Richard's scream even as her gaze met the gleam of
the man's dark eyes.
The man let out a cry of rage as he lunged. His feet left the ground as
he sailed through the air toward her. His wicked grin betrayed his
confidence.
Kahlan could see his eyeteeth hooked over his cracked lower lip, saw
the dark tooth in the front of the top row between his other yellow teeth,
saw the little white hook of a scar, as if he had once been eating with a
knife and had accidentally sliced the corner of his mouth. His stubble
looked like wire. His left eye didn't open as wide as his right. His right
ear had a big V-shaped notch taken out of the upper portion. It reminded her
of the way some farmers marked their swine.
She could see her own reflection in his dark eyes as her right arm came
up.
Kahlan wondered if he had a wife, a woman who cared for him, missed
him, pined for him. She wondered if he might have children, and, if he did,
what a man like this would teach his children. She had a momentary flash of
the ugliness it would be to have this beast atop her, his wire stubble
scraping her cheek raw, his cracked lips on hers, his yellow teeth raking
her neck as he lost himself in what he wanted.
Time twisted.
She held out her arm. The man crashed in toward her. She felt the
coarse weave of his dark brown shirt as the flat of her hand met the center
of his chest.
That heartbeat of time she had before he was atop her had not yet
begun. Richard had not yet managed to take a single frantic step.
The weight of the bear of a man against her hand felt as if it were but
a baby's breath. To Kahlan, it seemed as if he were frozen in space before
her.
Time was hers.
He was hers.
The rush of combat, the cries, the yells, the screams; the stink of
sweat and blood; the flash of steel, the clash of bodies; the curses and
growls; the fear, the terror, the heart-pounding dread... the rage ... was
no longer there for her. She was in a silent world all her own.
Even though she had been born with it and had always felt it there in
the core of her being, the awesome power within, in many ways, seemed
incomprehensible, inconceivable, unimaginable, remote. She knew it would
seem that way until she let her restraint slip, and then she would once
again be joined with a force of such breathtaking magnitude that it could
only be fully comprehended as it was being experienced. Although she had
unleashed it more times than she could remember, no matter how prepared she
was the extraordinary violence of it always still astonished her.
She regarded the man before her with cold calculation, ready for that
violence.
As he had charged in on her, time had belonged to this man.
Now time belonged to her.
She could feel the thread count of the fabric of his shirt, feel his
woolly chest hairs beneath it.
The heart-pounding shock of the sudden attack, the violence of it, was
gone now. Now there was only this man and her, forever linked by what was to
happen. This man had consciously chosen his own fate when he chose to attack
them. Her certainty of what was called for carried her beyond the need for
the assessment of emotion, and she felt none--no joy, not even relief; no
hate, not even aversion; no compassion, not even sorrow.
Kahlan shed those emotions to make way for the rush of power, to give
it free run.
Now he had no chance.
He was hers.
The man's face was contorted with the intoxicated, gloating glee of his
certitude that he was the glorious victor who would have her, that he was
now the one to decide what was to become of her life, that she was but his
to plunder.
Kahlan unleashed her power.
By her deliberate intent, the subordinate state of her birthright
instantly altered into overpowering force able to alter the very nature of
consciousness.
In the man's dark eyes had come the spark of suspicion that something
which he could not comprehend had irrevocably begun. And then there came the
lightning recognition that his life, as he had known it, was over.
Everything he wanted, thought about, worked toward, hoped for, prayed for,
possessed, loved, hated ... was ended.
In her eyes he saw no mercy, and that, more than anything, brought him
stark terror.
Thunder without sound jolted the air.
In that instant, the violence of it was as pristine, as beautiful, as
exquisite, as it was horrific.
That heartbeat of time Kahlan had before he was on her had still not
yet begun.
She could see in the man's eyes that even thought itself was too late
for him, now. Perception itself was being outpaced by the race of brutal
magic tearing through his mind, destroying forever who this man had been.
The force of the concussion jolted the air.
The stars shuddered.
Sparks from the fire lashed along the ground as the shock spread
outward in a ring, driving dust before its passing. Trees shook when hit by
the blow, shedding needles and leaves as the raging wave swept past.
He was hers.
His full weight flying forward knocked Kahlan back a step as she
twisted out of the way. The man flew past her and crashed to the ground,
sprawling on his face.
Without an instant of hesitation, he scrambled up onto his knees. His
hands came up in prayerful supplication. Tears flooded his eyes. His mouth,
which only an instant before was so warped with perverted expectation, now
distorted with the agony of pure anguish.
"Please, Mistress," he wailed, "command me!"
Kahlan regarded him, for the first time in his new life, with an
emotion: contempt.
O'nly the sound of Betty's soft, frightened bleating drifted out over
the otherwise silent campsite. Bodies lay sprawled haphazardly across the
ground. The attack appeared to be over. Richard, sword in hand, rushed
through the carnage to get to Kahlan. Jennsen stood near the edge of the
fire's light, while Cara checked the bodies for any sign of life.
Kahlan left the man she had just touched with her power kneeling in the
dirt, stalking past him toward Jennsen. Richard met her halfway there, his
free arm sweeping around her with relief.
"Are you all right?"
Kahlan nodded, quickly appraising their camp, on the lookout for any
more attackers, but saw only the men who were dead.
"What about you?" she asked.
Richard didn't seem to hear her question. His arm slipped from her
waist. "Dear spirits," he said, as he rushed to one of the bodies lying on
its side.
It was Sabar.
Jennsen stood not far away, trembling with terror, her knife held up
defensively in a fist, her eyes wide. Kahlan gathered Jennsen in her arms,
whispering assurance that it was over, that it was ended, that she was all
right.
Jennsen clutched at Kahlan. "Sabar--he was--protecting me--"
"I know, I know," Kahlan comforted.
She could see that there was no urgency in Richard's movements as he
laid Sabar on his back. The young man's arm flopped lifelessly to the side.
Kahlan's heart sank.
Tom ran into camp, gasping for air. He was streaked with blood and
sweat. Jennsen wailed and flew into his arms. He embraced her protectively,
holding her head to his shoulder as he tried to regain his breath.
Betty bleated in dismay from beneath the wagon, hesitantly emerging
only after Jennsen called repeated encouragement to her. The puling goat
finally rushed to Jennsen and huddled trembling against her skirts. Tom kept
a wary watch of the surrounding darkness.
Cara calmly walked among the bodies, surveying them for any sign of
life. With most, there could be no question. Here and there she nudged one
with the toe of her boot, or with the tip of her Agiel. By her lack of
urgency, there was no question that they were all dead.
Kahlan put a tender hand to Richard's back as he crouched beside
Sabar's body.
"How many people must die," he asked in a low, bitter voice, "for the
crime of wanting to be free, for the sin of wanting to live their own life?"
She saw that he still held the Sword of Truth in a white-knuckled fist.
The sword's magic, which had come out so reluctantly, still danced
dangerously in his eyes.
"How many!" he repeated.
"I don't know, Richard," Kahlan whispered.
Richard turned a glare toward the man across the camp, still on his
knees, his hands pressed together in a beseeching gesture begging to be
commanded, fearing to speak.
Once touched by a Confessor, the person was no longer who they had once
been. That part of their mind was forever gone. Who they were, what they
were, no longer existed.
In its place the magic of a Confessor's power placed unqualified
devotion to the wants and wishes of the Confessor who had touched them.
Nothing else mattered. Their only purpose in life, now, was to fulfill her
commands, to do her bidding, to answer her every question.
For one thus touched, there was no crime they wouldn't confess, if she
asked it of them. It was for this alone that Confessors had been created.
Their purpose, in a way, was the same as the Seeker's--the truth. In war, as
in all other aspects of life, there was no more important commodity for
survival than the truth.
This man, kneeling not far away, cried in abject misery because Kahlan
had asked nothing of him. There could be no agony more ghastly, no void more
terrifying, than to be empty of knowing her wish. Existence without her wish
was pointless. In the absence of her command, men touched by a Confessor had
been known to die.
Anything she now asked of him, whether it be to tell her his name,
confess his true love's name, or to murder his beloved mother, would bring
him boundless joy because he would finally have a task to carry out for her.
"Let's find out what this is all about," Richard said in a low growl.
In exhaustion, Kahlan stared at the man on his knees. She was so weary
she could hardly stand. Sweat trickled down between her breasts. She needed
rest, but this problem was more immediate and needed to be attended to
first.
On their way to the man waiting on his knees, his eyes turned
expectantly up toward Kahlan, Richard halted. There, in the dirt before his
boots, was the remains of the statue Sabar had brought to them. It was
broken into a hundred pieces, none of them any longer recognizable except
that those pieces were still a translucent amber color.
Nicci's letter had said that they didn't need the statue, now that it
had given its warning--a warning that Kahlan had somehow broken a protective
shield sealing away something profoundly dangerous.
Kahlan didn't know what the seal protected, but she feared that she
knew all too well what she had done to break it.
She feared even more that, because of her, the magic of Richard's sword
had begun to falter.
As Kahlan stood staring down at the amber fragments ground into the
dirt, despair flooded into her.
Richard's arm circled her waist. "Don't let your imagination get
carried away. We don't know what this is about, yet. We can't even be
certain that it's true--it could even be some kind of mistake."
Kahlan wished that she could believe that.
Richard finally slid his sword back into its scabbard. "Do you want to
rest first, sit a bit?"
His concern for her took precedence over everything. From the first day
she met him, it always had. Right then, it was his well-being that concerned
her.
Using her power sapped a Confessor of strength. It had left Kahlan
feeling not only weak, but, this time, nauseated. She had been named to the
post of Mother Confessor, in part, because her power was so strong that she
was able to recover it in hours; for others it had taken a day or sometimes
two. At the thought of all those other Confessors, some of whom she'd dearly
loved, being long dead, Kahlan felt the weight of hopelessness pulling her
even lower.
To fully recover her strength, she would need a night's rest. At the
moment, though, there were more important considerations, not the least of
which was Richard.
"No," she said. "I'm all right. I can rest later. Let's ask him what
you will."
Richard's gaze moved over the campsite littered with limbs, entrails,
bodies. The ground was soaked with blood. The stench of it all, along with
the still smoldering body beside the fire, was making Kahlan sicker by the
second. She turned away from the man on his knees, toward Richard, into the
protection of his arms. She was exhausted.
"And then let's get away from this place," she said. "We need to get
away from here. There might be more men coming." Kahlan worried that if he
had to draw the sword again, he might not have the help of its magic. "We
need to find a more secure camp."
Richard nodded his agreement. He looked over her head as he held her to
his chest. Despite everything, or perhaps because of everything, it felt
wonderful simply to be held. She could hear Friedrich just rushing back into
camp, panting as he ran. He stumbled to a halt as he let out a moan of
astonishment mixed with revulsion at what he saw.
"Tom, Friedrich," Richard asked, "do you have any idea if there are any
more men coming?"
"I don't think so," Tom said. "I think they were together. I caught
them coming up a gully. I was going to try to make it back here to warn you,
but four of them came over a rise and jumped me while the rest ran for our
camp."
"I didn't see anyone, Lord Rahl," Friedrich said, catching his breath.
"I came running when I heard the yelling."
Richard acknowledged Friedrich's words with a reassuring hand on the
man's shoulder. "Help Tom get the horses hitched. I don't want to spend the
night here."
As the two men sprang into action, Richard turned to Jennsen.
"Please lay out some bedrolls in the back of the wagon, will you? I'd
like Kahlan to be able to lie down and rest when we move out."
Jennsen patted Betty's shoulder, urging the goat to follow her. "Of
course, Richard." She hurried off to the wagon, Betty trotting along close
at her side.
As everyone rushed as quickly as possible to get their things together,
Richard went by himself to an open patch of ground nearby to dig a shallow
grave. There was no time for a funeral pyre. A lonely grave was the best
they could do, but Sabar's spirit was gone, and wouldn't fault the necessity
of their hurried care for his body.
Kahlan reconsidered her thought. After the letter from Nicci and
learning the meaning of the warning beacon, she now had even more reason to
doubt that many things, including spirits, were still true. The world of the
dead was connected to the world of the living by links of magic. The veil
itself was magic and said to be within those like Richard. They had learned
that without magic those links themselves could fail, and that, since those
other worlds couldn't exist independent of the world of life, but only
existed in a relational sense to the world of life, should the links fail
completely, those other worlds might very well cease to exist--much as,
without the sun, the concept of daytime would not exist.
It was now clear to Kahlan that the world's hold on magic was slipping,
and had been slipping for several years.
She knew the reason.
Spirits, the good and the bad, and the existence of everything else
that depended on magic, might soon be lost. That meant that death would
become final, in every sense of the word. It could even be that there was no
longer the possibility of being with a loved one after death, or of being
with the good spirits. The good spirits, even the underworld itself, might
be passing into nothingness.
When Richard was finished, Tom helped him gently place Sabar's body in
the ground. After Tom spoke quiet words asking the good spirits to watch
over one of their own, he and Richard covered the body over.
"Lord Rahl," Tom said in a low voice when they were finished, "while
some of the men began the attack on you, here, others slit the horses'
throats before joining their fellows to come after you four."
"All the horses?"
"Except mine. My draft horses are pretty big. The men were probably
worried about getting trampled. They left some men to take care of me, so
these here thought they had me out of the way. They probably figured they
could worry about the draft horses later, after they had the rest of you."
Tom shrugged his broad shoulders. "Maybe they even planned to capture you,
tie you up, and take you in the wagon."
Richard acknowledged Tom's words with a single nod. He wiped his
fingers across his forehead. Kahlan thought he looked worse than she felt.
She could see that the headache had returned and was crushing him under the
weight of its pain.
Tom looked around their camp, his gaze playing over the fallen men.
"What should we do with the rest of the bodies?"
"The races can have the rest of them," Richard said without hesitation.
Tom didn't look to have any disagreement with that. "I'd better go help
Friedrich finish getting the horses hitched to the wagon. They'll be a
handful with the scent of blood in their nostrils and the sight of the
others dead."
As Tom went to see to his horses, Richard called to Cara. "Count the
bodies," he told her. "We need to know the total."
"Richard," Kahlan asked in a confidential tone after Tom was out of
earshot and Cara had started stepping over some of the bodies and between
others, going about the task of taking a count, "what happened when you drew
the sword?"
He didn't ask what she meant or try to spare her from worry.
"There's something wrong with its magic. When I drew the sword, it
failed to heed my call. The men were rushing in and I couldn't delay in what
I had to do. Once I met the attack, the magic finally reacted.
"It's probably due to the headaches from the gift--they must be
interfering with my ability to join with the sword's magic."
"The last time you had the headaches they didn't interfere with the
sword's power."
"I told you, don't let your imagination get carried away. This has only
happened since I've started getting the headaches again. That has to be the
reason."
Kahlan didn't know if she dared believe him, or if he really even
believed it himself. He was right, though. The problem with the sword's
magic had only recently developed--after he started getting the headaches.
"They're getting worse, aren't they?"
He nodded. "Come on, let's get what answers we can."
Kahlan let out a tired sigh, resigned to that part of it. They had to
use this chance to find out what information was now available to them.
Kahlan turned to the man still on his knees.
The man's tearful eyes gazed pleadingly up at Kahlan as she stepped in
front of him. He had been waiting, alone and without her wishes, for quite a
while and as a result was in a state of dire misery.
"You are to come with us," Kahlan told him in a cold tone. "You are to
walk in front of the wagon for now, where we can keep an eye on you. You
will obey the orders of any of the others with me as you would obey my
orders. You will answer all questions truthfully."
The man fell to his belly on the ground, in tears, kissing her feet,
thanking her profusely for at last commanding him. Groveling on the ground,
with that V-shaped notch in his ear, he reminded her of nothing so much as a
swine.
Fists at her side, Kahlan screamed "Stop that!" She didn't want this
murdering pig touching her.
He sprang back instantly, aghast at the rage in her voice,
horror-struck that she was displeased with him. He cringed motionless at her
feet, his eyes wide, fearful that he would do something else to displease
her.
"You aren't in a uniform," Richard said to the man. "You and the other
men aren't soldiers?"
"We're soldiers, just not regular soldiers," the man said with eager
excitement to be able to answer the question and thus do Kahlan's bidding.
"We're special men serving with the Imperial Order."
"Special? How are you special?"
With a hint of uncertainty in his wet eyes, the man looked nervously up
at Kahlan. She gave him no sign. She had already told him that he was to
follow all their orders. The man, at last certain of her intention, rushed
to go on.
"We're a special unit of men--with the army--our task is to capture
enemies of the Order--we have to pass tests to be sure we're able men--loyal
men--and that we can accomplish the missions we're sent on--"
"Slow down," Richard said. "You're talking too fast."
The man glanced quickly at Kahlan, his eyes filling with tears that he
might have displeased her, too.
"Go on," she said.
"We don't wear uniforms or let our purpose be known," the man said with
obvious relief that if he continued it would satisfy her. "Usually we work
in cities, searching out insurrectionists. We mingle with people, get them
to think of us as one of them. When they plot against the Order, we go along
until we find out the names of all those involved and then we capture them
and turn them over for questioning."
Richard stared down at the man for a long time, his face showing no
reaction. Richard had been in the hands of the Order and "questioned."
Kahlan could only imagine what he must have been thinking.
"And do you hand over only those who you know to be plotting against
the Order?" Richard asked. "Or do you simply turn in those you suspect and
anyone who they know?"
"If we suspect they might be plotting--like if they keep to themselves
and their own group, and won't open their lives to other citizens--then we
turn them in to be questioned so that it can be determined what they might
be hiding." The man licked his lips, keen to tell them the full extent of
his methods. "We talk to those they work with, or neighbors, and get the
names of anyone they associate with, any of their friends--sometimes even
their closest family members. We usually take at least some of them, too,
and turn them over for questioning. When they're questioned, they all
confess their crimes against the Order so that proves our suspicions about
them were right."
Kahlan thought that Richard might draw his sword and behead the man on
the spot. Richard knew all too well what they did to those who were brought
in, knew how hopeless was their plight.
Confessions obtained under torture often provided names of anyone who
might be suspicious for any reason, making the job of torturing a very busy
profession. The people of the Old World lived in constant fear that they
would be taken to one of the many places where people were questioned.
Those pulled in were rarely guilty of plotting against the Order; most
people were too busy just trying to survive, trying to feed their families,
to have time to plot to overthrow the rule of the Imperial Order. Many
people did, however, talk about a better life, about what they would like to
do, to grow, to create, to own, about their hopes that their children would
have a better life than theirs. Since mankind's duty was sacrifice to the
betterment of their fellow man, not to their own betterment, that, to the
Imperial Order, was not just insurrection, but blasphemy. In the Old World,
misery was a widespread virtue, a duty to a higher calling.
There were others who didn't dream of a better life, but dreamed of
helping the Order by turning in the names of those who spoke ill of the
Order, or hid food or even a bit of money, or talked of a better life.
Turning in such "disloyal citizens" kept yet other fingers from pointing at
the informer. Informing became an indicator of sanctity.
Instead of drawing his sword, Richard changed the subject. "How many of
you were there, tonight?"
"Including me, twenty-eight," the man said without delay.
"Were you all together in one group when you attacked?"
The man nodded, keen to admit their whole plan and thus gain Kah-lan's
approval. "We wanted to make sure you and, and..." His eyes turned to Kahlan
as he realized the incompatibility of his two goals-- confessing and
pleasing the Mother Confessor.
He burst into tears, clasping his hands prayerfully. "Forgive me,
Mistress! Please, forgive me!"
If his voice was the quintessence of emotion, hers was the opposite.
"Answer the question."
He brought his sobbing to a halt in order to speak as he had been
commanded. Tears, though, continued to stream down his filthy cheeks. "We
stayed together for a focused attack, so we could be sure that we captured
Lord Rahl and, and... you, Mother Confessor. When trying to capture a
good-size group we split up, with half holding back to look for anyone who
might try to slip away, but I told the men that I wanted the both of you,
and you were said to be together, so this was our chance. I didn't want to
run the risk that you would have any hope of fighting us off, so I ordered
all the men to the attack, having some cut the throats of the saddle horses,
first, to prevent any possibility of escape."
His face brightened. "I never suspected that we might fail."
"Who sent you?" Kahlan asked.
The man shuffled forward on his knees, his hand tentatively coming up
to touch her leg. Kahlan remained motionless, but by her icy glare let him
know that touching her would displease her greatly. The hand backed away.
"Nicholas," he said.
Kahlan's brow twitched. She had been expecting him to say Jagang had
sent him.
She was wary of the possibility that the dream walker might be watching
through this man's eyes. Jagang had in the past sent assassins after he had
slipped into their thoughts. With Jagang in a person's mind, he dominated
and directed them, and even Cara could not control them. Nor, for that
matter, could Kahlan.
"You're lying to me. Jagang sent you."
The man fell to pitiful weeping. "No, Mistress! I've never had any
dealings with His Excellency. The army is vast and far-flung. I take my
orders from those in my section. I don't think that the ones they take
orders from, or their commanders, or even theirs, are worthy of His
Excellency's attention. His Excellency is far to the north, bringing the
word of the Order's salvation to a lawless and savage people; he would not
even be aware of us.
"We are but a lowly squad of men with the muscle to snatch people the
Order wants, either for questioning or to silence them. We are all from this
part of the empire and so we were called upon because we were here. I am not
worthy of the attention of His Excellency."
"But Jagang has visited you--in your dreams. He has visited your mind."
"Mistress?" The man looked terrified to have to question her rather
than answer her question. "I don't understand."
Kahlan stared. "Jagang has come into your mind. He has spoken to you."
He looked sincerely puzzled as he shook his head. "No, Mistress. I have
never met His Excellency. I have never dreamed about him--I don't know
anything about him, except that Altur'Rang has the honor of being the place
where he was born.
"Would you like me to kill him for you, Mistress? Please, if it is your
wish, allow me to kill him for you?"
The man didn't know how preposterous such a notion was; in his desire
to please her, though, if she commanded it he would be only too happy to
make the attempt. Kahlan turned her back on the man as Richard watched him.
She leaned toward Richard a bit as she spoke quietly, so the man
wouldn't hear. "I don't know if those visited by the dream walker must
always be aware of it, but I think they would be. The ones I've seen before
were mindful of Jagang's presence in their mind."
"Couldn't the dream walker slip into a person's mind without their
being aware of it just so he could watch us?"
"I suppose it's possible," she said. "But think of all the millions of
people in the Old World--he can't know whose mind to enter so he can watch.
Dream walker or not, he is only one man."
"Are you gifted?" Richard asked the man.
"No."
"Well," Richard whispered, "Nicci told me that Jagang rarely bothers
with the ungifted. She said that it was difficult for him to take the mind
of the ungifted, so he simply uses the gifted he controls and has them
control the ungifted for him. He has all the Sisters he's captured that he
has to worry about. He has to maintain his control over them and direct
their actions--including what we started to read in Nicci's letter--about
how he's guiding the Sisters in altering people into weapons. Besides that
he heads the army and plans strategy. He has a lot of things to manage, so
he usually confines himself to the minds of the gifted."
"But not always. If he has to, if he needs to, if he wants to, he can
enter the minds of the ungifted. If we were smart," Kahlan whispered, "we
would kill this man now."
As they spoke, Richard's glare never left the man. She knew he would
not hesitate to agree unless he thought the man might still be of use.
"I have but to command it," Kahlan reminded him, "and he will drop
dead."
Richard took in her eyes for a moment, then turned back to the man and
frowned. "You said someone named Nicholas sent you. Who is this Nicholas?"
"Nicholas is a fearsome wizard in the service of the Order."
"You saw him. He gave you these orders?"
"No. We are too lowly for one such as he to bother with us. He sent
orders that were passed down."
"How did you know where we were?" Richard asked.
"The orders included the general area. They said that we should look
for you coming north at the eastern edge of the desert wasteland and if we
found you we were to capture you."
"How did Nicholas know where we were?"
The man blinked, as if searching his mind to see if he had the answer.
"I don't know. We weren't told how he knew. We were told only that we were
to search this area and if we found you we were to bring you both in, alive.
The commander who passed on the orders told me not to fail or the Slide
would be very displeased with us."
"Who would be displeased? ... The Slide?"
"Nicholas the Slide. That is what he's called. Some people just call
him 'the Slide.' "
Frowning, Kahlan turned back to the man. "The what?"
The man began trembling at her frown. "The Slide, Mistress."
"What does that mean? The Slide?"
The man fell to wailing, his hands clasped together again as he begged
her forgiveness. "I don't know, Mistress. I don't know. You asked who sent
me, that is his name. Nicholas. People call him the Slide."
"Where is he?" Richard asked.
"I don't know," the man blurted out as he wept. "I received my orders
from my commander. He said that a Brother of the Order brought the orders to
his commander."
Richard took a deep breath as he rubbed the back of his neck. "What
else do you know about this Nicholas, other than that he's a wizard and he's
called 'the Slide'?"
"I only know to fear him, as do my commanders."
"Why? What happens if you displease him?" Kahlan asked.
"He impales those who displease him."
With the stench of blood and burning flesh, along with the things she
was hearing, it was all Kahlan could do to keep from being sick. She didn't
know how much longer her stomach could take it if they stayed in this place,
if this man told her anything else.
Kahlan gently grasped Richard's forearm. "Please, Richard," she
whispered, "this isn't really getting us anything very useful. Please, let's
get out of here? If we think of anything, we can question him more later."
"Get out in front of the wagon," Richard said without hesitation. "I
don't want her having to look at you."
The man bobbed his head and scrambled away.
"I don't think Jagang is in his mind," Kahlan said, "but what if I'm
wrong?"
"For now, I think we should keep him alive. Out in front of the wagon,
Tom will have a clear view of him. If we're wrong, well, Tom is very quick
with his knife." Richard let out a shallow breath. "I've already learned
something important."
"What?"
His hand in the small of her back started her moving. "Let's get going
and I'll tell you about it."
Kahlan could see the wagon waiting in the distant darkness. Tom's eyes
followed the man as he ran out in front of the big draft horses and stood
waiting. Jennsen and Cara were in the back of the wagon. Friedrich sat up on
the seat beside Tom.
"How many?" Richard called to Cara as they approached the wagon.
"With the four out in the hills that Tom took care of, and this one,
here, twenty-eight."
"That's all of them, then," Richard said with relief.
Kahlan felt his hand on the small of her back slip away. He staggered
to a halt. Kahlan paused beside him, not knowing why he'd stopped. Richard
sank to one knee. Kahlan dropped down beside him, throwing an arm around him
for support. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain. With his arm pressed across
his abdomen, he doubled over.
Cara leaped over the side of the wagon and raced to their side.
Despite how exhausted Kahlan was, panic jolted her instantly to full
alert. "We need to get to the sliph," she said to Cara as well as Richard.
"We need to get to Zedd and get some answers--and some help. Zedd can help."
Richard drew labored breaths, unable to speak as he held his breath
against a wave of agony. Kahlan felt helpless not knowing what to do to help
him.
"Lord Rahl," Cara said, kneeling before him, "you have been taught to
control pain. You must do that, now." She seized a fistful of his hair and
lifted his head to be able to look into his eyes. "Think," she commanded.
"Remember. Put the pain in its place. Do it!"
Richard clutched her forearm as if to thank her for her words. "Can't,"
he finally managed to say to Kahlan through his obvious suffering. "We can't
go in the sliph."
"We must," she insisted. "The sliph is the fastest way."
"And if I step down into the sliph, breathe in that quicksilver
creature--and my magic fails?"
Kahlan was frantic. "But we must go in the sliph to get there in a
hurry." She feared to say "in time."
"And if anything is wrong, I'll die." He panted, trying to catch his
breath against the pain. "Without magic, breathing the sliph is death. The
sword is failing me." He swallowed, coughed, gasped for breath. "If my gift
is causing the headaches, and that's making magic falter in me, and I enter
the sliph, I will be dead after I take the first breath. There's no way to
test it."
An icy wave of terror shot through her veins. Getting to Zedd was
Richard's only hope. That had been her plan. Without help, the headaches of
the gift would kill him.
She feared, though, that she knew why the magic of his sword was
failing, and it wasn't the headaches. She feared that it was in fact the
same thing that had caused the seal to be broken. The warning beacon
testified that she was the cause of that. If it was true, then she was the
cause of that and much more.
If she was right, she realized, if it was true, then Richard was right
about the sliph--going into the sliph would indeed be death. If she was
right, then he wouldn't even be able to call the sliph, much less travel by
it.
"Richard Rahl, if you're going to throw mud on my best ideas then you
had better have an idea of your own to offer in its place."
He was gasping, now, in the clutch of violent pain. And then Kahlan saw
blood when he coughed.
"Richard!"
Tom, looking alarmed, raced up beside them. When he saw the blood
running down Richard's chin, he turned ashen.
"Help him to the wagon," Kahlan said, trying to keep her voice steady.
Cara put her shoulder under his arm. Tom circled an arm around Richard
and helped Kahlan and Cara lift him to his feet.
"Nicci," Richard said.
"What?" Kahlan asked.
"You wanted to know if I had an idea. Nicci." He gasped in pain and
struggled to get his breath. Yet more blood came when he coughed. It was
dripping off his chin.
Nicci was a sorceress, not a wizard. Richard needed a wizard. Even if
they had to travel overland, they could race there. "But Zedd would be
better able--"
"Zedd is too far," he said. "We need to get to Nicci. She can use both
sides of the gift."
Kahlan hadn't thought of that. Maybe she really could help.
Halfway to the wagon, Richard collapsed. It was all they could do to
hold up his dead weight. With Tom gripping him under the backs of his
shoulders and Cara and Kahlan each holding a leg, they ran the rest of the
way to the wagon.
Tom, without the need of help from Cara and Kahlan, hoisted Richard
into the back of the wagon. Jennsen hurriedly unfurled another bedroll. They
laid Richard out as carefully as they could. Kahlan felt as if she were
watching herself react, move, talk. She refused to allow herself to give in
to panic.
Kahlan and Jennsen tried to lean in, to see how he was, but Cara shoved
them back out of the way. She bent over Richard, putting her ear to his
mouth, listening. Her fingers felt for a pulse at the side of his throat.
Her other hand cupped the back of his neck, no doubt preparing to hold him
to give him the breath of life if she had to. Mord-Sith were knowledgeable
about such things; they knew how to keep people alive in order to extend
their torture. Cara knew how to use that knowledge to help save lives, too.
"He's breathing," Cara said as she straightened. She laid a comforting
hand on Kahlan's arm. "He's breathing easier now."
Kahlan nodded her thanks, unwilling to test her voice. She moved in
closer to Richard, on the other side, while Cara wiped the blood from his
chin and mouth. Kahlan felt helpless. She didn't know what to do.
"We'll ride all night," Tom said over his shoulder as he climbed up
into the driver's seat.
Kahlan forced herself to think. They had to get to Nicci.
"No," she said. "It's a long way to Altur'Rang. We're not near any
roads; picking our way cross country in the dark is foolhardy. If we're
reckless and push too hard we'll just end up killing the horses--or they
could break a leg, which would be just as bad. If we lose the horses, we
can't very well carry Richard all the way and expect to make it in time.
"The wisest thing to do is to go just as fast as we possibly can, but
we also have to get rest along the way to be ready should we be attacked
again. We have to use our heads or we'll never make it."
Jennsen held Richard's hand in both of hers. "He has that headache, and
he fought all those men--maybe if he can just get some sleep, he'll be
better, then."
Kahlan was buoyed by that thought, even though she didn't think it was
that simple. She stood in the wagon bed, looking out at the man waiting for
her to command him.
"Are there any more of you? Any more sent to attack us or capture us?
Did this Nicholas send anyone else?"
"Not that I'm aware of, Mistress."
Kahlan spoke softly to Tom. "If he even looks like he's going to cause
any trouble, don't hesitate. Kill him."
With a nod, Tom readily agreed. Kahlan dropped back down and felt
Richard's brow. His skin was cold and wet.
"We'd best go on until we find a place that will be easier to defend. I
think Jennsen is right that he needs rest; I don't think bouncing around in
the back of this wagon is going to help him. We'll all need to get some rest
and then start out at first light."
"We need to find a horse," Cara said. "The wagon is too slow. If we can
find a horse, I'll ride like the wind, find Nicci, and start back with her.
That way we don't have to wait all the way until we get there in the wagon."
"Good idea." Kahlan looked up at Tom. "Let's get going--find a place to
stop for the night."
Tom nodded as he threw off the brake. At his urging, the horses heaved
their weight against the names and the wagon lurched ahead.
Betty, puling softly, lay beside an unconscious Richard and put her
head down on his shoulder. Jennsen stroked Betty's head.
Kahlan saw tears running down Jennsen's cheeks. "I'm sorry about
Rusty."
Betty's head came up. She let out a pitiful bleat.
Jennsen nodded. "Richard will be all right," she said, her voice choked
with tears as she took Kahlan's hand. "I know he will."
Zedd thought he heard something.
The spoonful of stew he was about to put into his waiting mouth paused.
He remained motionless, listening.
The Keep often had sounded alive to him, as if it were breathing. Once
in a while it even sounded as if it were letting out a small sigh. Ever
since he was a boy, Zedd had, on occasion, heard loud snaps that he never
could trace. He suspected such sounds were most likely the massive stone
blocks moving just a tad, popping as they yielded ground against a neighbor.
There were stone blocks down in the foundations of the Keep that were the
size of small palaces.
Once, when Zedd was no more than ten or twelve, a loud crack had rung
through the entire Keep as if the place had been struck with a giant hammer.
He ran out of the library, where he'd been studying, to see other people
coming out of rooms all up and down the hall, looking about, whispering
their worries to one another. Zedd's father had later told him that it was
found to be nothing more than one of the huge foundation blocks cracking
suddenly, and while it posed no structural problem, the abrupt snap of such
an enormous piece of granite had been heard throughout the Keep. Although
such occurrences were rare, it was not the last time he heard such a
harmless, but frightening, sound in the Keep.
And then there were the animals. Bats flew unrestricted through parts
of the Keep. There were towers that soared to dizzying heights, some empty
inside but for stone stairs curving up around the inside of the outer wall
on their way up to a small room at the top, or an observation deck. In the
dusty streamers of sunlight penetrating the dark interiors of those towers
there could be seen myriad bugs flitting about. The bats loved the towers.
Rats, too, lived in parts of the Keep. They scurried and squeaked,
sometimes causing a fright. Mice were common in places, making noise
scratching and gnawing at things. And then there were the cats, offspring of
former mousers and pets, but now all wild, that lived off the rats and the
mice. The cats also hunted the birds that flew in and out of uncovered
openings to feed on bugs, or to build nests up in high recesses.
There were sometimes awful sounds when a bat, a mouse, a bird, or even
a cat went somewhere they weren't permitted. The shields were meant to keep
people away from dangerous or restricted areas, but they were also placed to
prevent unauthorized access to many of the items stored and preserved in the
Keep. The shields guarded against life; they made no distinction between
human and nonhuman life.
Otherwise, after all, a pet dog that innocently wandered into a
restricted area could theoretically retrieve a dangerous talisman and
proudly take it to a child master who could be put in peril by it. Those who
placed the shields were aware that it was also possible for unscrupulous
people to train animals to go to restricted areas, snatch whatever they
might be able to carry, and bring it to them. Not knowing what animal might
potentially be trained for such a task, the shields were made to ward all
life. If a bat flew into the wrong shield, it was incinerated.
There were shields in the Keep that even Zedd could not get through
because they required both sides of the gift and he had only the Additive.
Some of the shields took the form of a barrier of magic that physically
prevented passage in some way, either by restricting movement or by inducing
a sensation so unpleasant that one wouldn't force oneself beyond. Those
shields were meant to prevent ungifted people or children from entering
certain areas, not to prevent entrance to the gifted, so it was not
necessary for those shields to kill.
But such shields only worked for those who were ungifted.
In other places, entrance was strictly forbidden to anyone but those
with not only the appropriate ability, but proper authority. Without both
the appropriate ability and authority granted by spells keyed to the
particular defenses in that area, such as metal plates that had to be
touched by an authorized wizard, the shields killed whatever entered them.
The shields killed animals as infallibly, as effectively, as they would kill
any intruder.
Such dangerous shields gave warnings of heat, light, or tingling as a
warning so as to prevent people from unintentionally going near them--after
all, with the size of the place, it was easy enough to become lost. Such
warnings worked for the animals, too, but occasionally a cat chased a
panicked mouse into a lethal shield, and sometimes the cat, racing after,
would run right into it as well.
As Zedd waited, listening, the silence stretched on, unbroken. If he
really had heard something, it could have been the Keep moving, or an animal
squeaking when it approached a shield, or even a gust of wind coming through
one of the hundreds of openings. Whatever it was, it was silent, now. The
wooden spoonful of stew finally completed its journey.
"Umm ..." Zedd declared to no one in particular. "Good!"
To his great disappointment when he'd first tasted it, he had found
that the stew wasn't done. Rather than hurry the process with a bit of
magic, and possibly incur Adie's wrath for meddling with her cooking, Zedd
had sat down on the couch and resigned himself to doing a bit of reading.
There was no end to the reading. Books offered the potential of
valuable information that could aid them in ways they couldn't foretell.
From time to time, as he read, he checked the progress of the stew, rather
patiently, he thought.
Now, as he tasted it, it finally seemed to be done. The chunks of ham
were so tender they would fall apart when his tongue pressed them to the
roof of his mouth. The whole delightfully bubbling pot had taken on the
heady melding of onions and oils, carrots and turnips, a hint of garlic and
a dizzying swirl of complementary spices, all crowded with nuggets of ham,
some still with crisp fat along one edge.
To his great annoyance, Zedd had long ago noticed that Adie hadn't made
any biscuits. Stew went well with biscuits. There should be biscuits. He
decided that a bowl of stew would hold him until she returned and made some.
There should be biscuits. It was only right.
He didn't know where Adie had gone. Since he had been down in Aydindril
most of the day, he reasoned that she had probably gone off to one of the
libraries to search through books for anything that might be of help. She
was a great help ferreting potentially relevant books out of the libraries.
Being from Nicobarese, Adie sought out books in that language. There were
books all over the Keep, so there was no telling where she was.
There were also storerooms filled with racks and racks of bones. Other
rooms contained rows of tall cabinets, each with hundreds of drawers. Zedd
had seen bones of creatures there that he had never seen in life. Adie was
an expert of sorts on bones. She had lived for a good portion of her life in
seclusion in the shadow of the boundary. People living in the area had been
afraid of her; they called her the bone woman because she collected bones.
They had been everywhere in her house. Some of those bones protected her
from the beasts that came out of the boundary.
Zedd sighed. Books or bones, there was no telling where she was.
Besides that, there were any number of other things in the Wizard's Keep
that would be of great interest to a sorceress. She might even have simply
wanted to go for a walk, or up on a rampart to gaze at the stars and think.
It was much easier to wait for her to come back to her stew than for
him to go looking for her. Maybe he should have put one of the bells around
her neck.
Zedd hummed a merry tune to himself as he spooned stew into a wooden
bowl. No use waiting on an empty stomach, he always said; that only made a
person grouchy. It was really better to have a snack and be in good humor
than to wait and be miserable. He would only be bad company if he was
miserable.
On the eighth spoon of stew into the bowl, he heard a sound.
His hand froze above the bubbling pot.
Zedd thought he'd heard a bell tinkle.
Zedd wasn't given to flights of imagination or to being unreasonably
jumpy, but a cold shiver tingled across his flesh as if he'd been touched by
the icy fingers of a spirit reaching out from another world. He stood
motionless, partly bent toward the pot in the fire, partly turned toward the
hall, listening.
It could be a cat. Maybe he hadn't tied the thin cord high enough and
as a cat went under the line its tail had swished up and rung the bell.
Maybe a cat was being mischievous and as it sat on its haunches, tail
swishing back and forth, it had batted a bell. It could be a cat.
Or maybe a bird had landed on the line to roost for the night. A person
couldn't get past the shields in order to trip a belled cord. Zedd had
placed extra shields. It had to be an animal--a cat, or a bird.
If so, if no one could get past the regular shields and the extras he
had placed, then why had he strung bells?
Despite the likely explanations, his hair was trying to stand on end.
He didn't like the way the bell had rung; there was something about the
character of the sound that told him it wasn't an animal. The sound had been
too firm, too abrupt, too quick to stop.
He realized fully, now, that a bell had in fact rung. He wasn't
imagining it. He tried to re-create the sound in his mind so that he might
be able to put shape to the form that had tripped the cord.
Zedd silently set the bowl down on the side of the granite hearth. He
rose up, listening with an ear turned toward the passage from where he had
heard the bell. His mind raced through a map of all the bells he'd placed.
He needed to be sure.
He slipped through the door and into the passageway, the back of his
shoulder brushing the plastered wall as he moved down to the first
intersection on his right, watching not just ahead but behind as well.
Nothing moved in the hallway ahead. He paused, leaning ahead to take a quick
glance down the hall to the right. When he found it clear, he took the turn.
Zedd moved quickly past closed doors, past a tapestry of vineyards that
he had always thought was rather poorly executed, past an empty doorway to a
room with a window that looked out over a deep shaft between towers on a
high rampart, and past three more intersections until he reached the first
stairway. He swept around the corner to the right, up the stairs that curved
around to the left as they climbed up and crossed over the hall he'd just
been in. In this way he could head back toward a network of halls where he'd
placed a web of bells without using those same halls.
Zedd followed a mental map of a complex tangle of passages, halls,
rooms, and dead ends that, over a lifetime, he had come to know intimately.
Being First Wizard, he had access to every place in the Keep except those
places that required Subtractive Magic. There were a few places where he
could get confused, but this was not one of them.
He knew that unless someone was following in his footsteps, they would
have to either go back or pass a place where he had set traps of elaborate
magic as well as simple string. Then, if they didn't see the cord, they
would ring another bell. Then he would be sure.
Maybe it was Adie. Maybe she simply hadn't seen the inky cord stretched
across a doorway. Maybe she had been annoyed that he'd strung bells and
maybe she'd rung one just to vex him.
No, Adie wasn't like that. She might shake her finger at him and
deliver a scathing lecture on why she didn't agree with him that stringing
bells was an effective thing to do, but she wouldn't pull a trick about
something she would recognize as intended to warn of danger. No, Adie might
possibly have accidentally rung the bell, but she wouldn't have rung it
deliberately.
Another bell rang. Zedd spun to the sound and then froze.
The bell had come from the wrong direction--from where he'd set a bell
on the other side of a conservatory. It was too far from the first for
anyone to have made it this soon. They would have had to go up a tower
stairway, across a bridge to a rampart, along a narrow walkway in the dark,
past several intersections to the correct turn that would descend a spiral
ramp and make it down through a snarl of passageways in order to break the
cord.
Unless there was more than one person.
The bell had chimed with a quick jerk and then clattered as it
skittered across stone. It had to be a person tripping over the cord and
sending the bell skipping across the stone floor.
Zedd changed his plan. He turned and raced down a narrow passageway to
the left, climbing the first stairwell, running up the oak treads three at a
time. He took the right fork at the landing, raced to the second circular
stairwell of cut stone and climbed as fast as his legs would carry him. His
foot slipped on the narrow wedges of spiraling steps and he banged his shin.
He paused to wince only for a second. He used the time to consult his mental
map of the Keep, and then he was moving again.
At the top, he dashed down a short paneled hall, sliding to a stop on
the polished maple floor. He shouldered open a small, round-topped oak door.
A starry sky greeted him. He sucked deep draughts of cool night air as he
raced along the narrow rampart. He paused twice along the way to peer down
through the slots in the crenellated battlements. He didn't see anyone. That
was a good sign--he knew where they had to be if they weren't moving by an
outer route.
He ran on across the swaying span between towers, robes flying behind,
crossing over the entire section of the Keep where both bells had rung far
below, going over the top of the area in order to get behind whoever had
tripped the cords. While they had tripped bells on opposite sides of the
conservatory, they had to have come in through the same wing--he knew that
much. He wanted to get behind them, bottle them in before they could get to
an unprotected section where they would encounter a bewildering variety of
passageways. If they were to make it there and hide in that area, he could
have a time of rooting them out.
His mind raced as fast as his feet as he tried to think, tried to
recall all the shields, tried to figure how someone could have gotten past
the defenses to get to that specific wing where the bells that had rung were
placed. There were shields that should have made it impossible. He had to
consider thousands of corridors and passageways in the Keep, trying to come
up with all the potential routes. It was like a complex multilevel puzzle,
and despite how thorough he'd been, it was possible he'd missed something.
He had to have missed something.
There were rooms or even entire sections that were shielded and could
not be entered, but often they could be circumvented. Even if a hall was
shielded at both ends, so as to prevent anyone from getting to the rooms in
that hall, you could still usually get around to the other end of the hall
and make your way to whatever lay beyond. That was deliberate; while the
rooms might have held dangerous items of magic that had to be kept
contained, there needed to be ways to get to them, and get beyond to other
rooms that might, from time to time, also have to be restricted. Most of the
Keep was like that--a three-dimensional maze with almost endless possible
routes.
For the unwary, it could also be a killing field of traps. There were
places layered with warning barriers and other devices that would keep any
innocent person away. Beyond those protective layers, the shields gave no
warning before they killed. Trespassers would not know there were shields
embedded beyond, and that they were stepping into a trap. Such shields were
designed that way in order to kill invaders who penetrated that deep; the
lack of warning was deliberate.
Zedd supposed it was possible for someone to bypass all the shields and
work their way into the depths of the place in order to ring those
particular bells, but for the life of him, he couldn't trace all the steps
necessary. But whoever it was, no matter how lucky they were, they would
soon get themselves stuck in the labyrinth and then, if they weren't killed
by a shield, he could deal with them.
Zedd gazed out past towers, ramparts, bridges, and open stairs to rooms
projecting from soaring walls, out on the city of Aydindril far below, now
all dark and dead-looking. How had someone gotten past the stone bridge up
to the Keep?
A Sister of the Dark, maybe. Maybe one of them had figured out how to
use Subtract!ve Magic to take his shield down. But even if one had, the
shields in the Keep were different. Most of them had been placed by the
wizards in ancient times, wizards with both sides of the gift. A Sister of
the Dark would not be able to breach such shields-- they had been designed
to withstand enemy wizards of that time. They were far more powerful than
any mere Sister of the Dark.
And where was Adie? She should have been back. He wished now that he
had gone and found her. She needed to know that there was someone in the
Keep. Unless she already knew. Unless they had her.
Zedd turned and raced down the rampart. At the projecting bastion, he
seized the railing to the side to halt his forward rush and spin himself
around the corner. He raced down the dark steps as if he were running down a
hill.
With his gift, he could sense that there was no one in the vicinity.
Since there was no one near, that meant that he had managed to get behind
them. He had them trapped.
At the bottom of the steps he threw open the door and flew into the
hallway beyond.
He crashed into a man standing there, waiting.
Zedd's momentum knocked the big man from his feet. They fell in a
tangle, sliding together along the polished green and yellow marble floor,
both grappling for control.
Zedd could not have been more surprised. His gifted sense told him the
man was not there. His gifted sense was obviously wrong. The disorientation
of encountering a man when he had sensed that the hall was empty was more
jarring than the headlong tumble.
Even as he was rolling, Zedd was casting webs to tangle the man in a
snare of magic. The man, in turn, lunged to tangle Zedd in meaty arms.
In desperation, despite the close range, Zedd pulled enough heat from
the surrounding air to unleash a thunderous blast of lightning and cast it
directly into the man. The blinding flash burned a lacing line through the
stone block wall beyond him.
Only too late did Zedd realize that the discharge of deadly power had
lanced through the man without effect. The hall filled with shards of stone
whistling about, ricocheting from walls and ceiling, skipping along the
floor.
The man landed on Zedd, driving the wind from him. Desperately yelling
for help, the man wrestled Zedd on the slippery floor. Zedd concocted a weak
and fumbling defense, to give the man a false sense of confidence, until he
was able to suddenly land a knee sharply at the point of his attacker's
sternum. The man cried out in surprise as much as in pain as he flipped
backward off Zedd, gasping to get his wind back.
Having sucked so much heat from the air had left it as frigid as a
winter night. Clouds of their breath filled the cold air as both men panted
with the effort of the struggle. The man again cried out for help, hoping to
bring comrades to his aid.
Zedd would assume that anyone would fear to attack a wizard by muscle
alone. This man, though, had no need to fear magic. Even if he hadn't known
that before, certainly the evidence was now all too clear. Yet, despite the
man being at least twice the size of his opponent, less than a third his
age, and having immunity from the conjuring being thrown at him, Zedd
thought that he fought rather... squeamishly.
However timid the man was, he was determined. He scrambled to attack
again. If he broke Zedd's neck, it wouldn't matter that he did so timidly.
As the man regained his feet and lunged, Zedd drew back his arms,
elbows cocked, fingers spread, and cast more of the lightning, but this time
he knew better than to waste his effort trying to cut down a man not touched
by magic. Instead, Zedd sought to rake the floor with the conjured bolts of
power. It slammed into the stone with unrestrained violence, ripping and
splintering whole sections, throwing sharp jagged shards streaking through
the air.
A fist-sized block of stone hurtling at tremendous speed crashed into
the man's shoulder. Above the boom of thunderous power, Zedd heard bones
snap. The impact spun the man around and knocked him back against the wall.
Since Zedd now knew that this intruder could not directly be harmed by
magic, he instead filled the hall with a deafening storm of magic designed
not to assail the man directly but to tear the place apart into a cloud of
deadly flying fragments.
The man, as he recoiled from striking the wall, again threw himself at
Zedd. He was met by a shower of deadly shards whistling through the air
toward him. Blood splattered across the wall beyond as the man was ripped to
shreds. In a blink, he was killed and dropped heavily to the floor.
From beyond the smoke and dust filling the hall, two more men suddenly
flew at Zedd. His gifted sense told him that, like the first man, these men
were not there, either.
Zedd threw yet more lightning to rip up the floor and unleash flying
stone at the men, but they were already through the flares of power, diving
onto him. He crashed to his back, the men atop him. They seized his arms.
Zedd struggled frantically to let loose a blast to bring down the
ceiling. He began to whirl the air above the men to tear the hall to pieces,
and them with it.
A beefy hand with a filthy white rag clamped down over Zedd's face. He
gasped, only to inhale a powerful smell that made his throat want to clench
shut, but too late.
With the cloth and the big hand covering his whole face, Zedd couldn't
see. The world spun sickeningly.
Soft, silent blackness pressed in around him as he fought to resist it,
until he lost consciousness.
Zedd woke, his head spinning, his stomach heaving with rippling waves
of nausea. He didn't think that in his entire life he had ever felt so sick.
He hadn't known it was possible to feel so intense an urge to vomit, without
actually throwing up. He couldn't lift his head. If he could just die right
then, it would be a welcome release from such dizzying agony.
He started to put his hands over the light hurting his eyes, but found
his wrists were tied behind his back.
"I think he's waking," a man said in a subservient voice.
Despite his nausea, Zedd instinctively tried to use his gift to sense
how many people were around him. For some reason, his gift that ordinarily
flowed as easily as thought, as simply as using his eyes to see, his ears to
hear, felt thick and slow, as if mired in molasses. He reasoned that it was
probably the result of whatever vile substance it was they had soaked the
rag in to cause him to pass out when held over his face. Still, he managed
to sense that there was only one person around him.
Powerful hands seized his robes and yanked him to his feet. Zedd gave
himself permission to vomit. Against all expectation, it didn't happen. The
dark night swam before his blurred vision. He could make out trees against
the sky, stars, and the looming black shape of the Keep.
Suddenly, a tongue of flame ignited in midair. Zedd blinked at the
unexpected brightness. The small flame, wavering with a lazy motion, floated
above the upturned palm of a woman with wiry gray hair. Zedd saw other
people in the shadows; his gifted sense was wrong. Like the man who had
attacked him, these, too, had to be people not affected by magic.
The woman standing before him peered at him intently. Her expression
twisted with satisfied loathing.
"Well, well, well," she said with patronizing delight. "The great
wizard himself awakes."
Zedd said nothing. It seemed to amuse her. Her fearsome scowl and
humped nose, lit from the side by the flame she held above her palm, floated
closer.
"You are ours, now," she hissed.
Zedd, having waited patiently to gather his resolve, abruptly initiated
the required mental twist to the gift all the way down to his soul in order
to simultaneously call down lightning, focus air to slice this woman in two,
and gather every stone and pebble from all around to crush her under an
avalanche of rock. He expected the night to light with such power as he
unlocked and sent forth.
Nothing happened.
Not waiting to waste the time to analyze what could be the difficulty,
he was forced to abandon attempts at satisfying his emotional preferences,
and to ignite wizard's fire itself to consume her.
Nothing happened.
Not only did nothing happen, but it felt as if the attempt itself were
but a pebble falling endlessly into a vast, dark well. The expectation
withered in the face of what he found within himself: a kind of dreadful
emptiness.
Zedd felt as if he couldn't light a tongue of flame to match hers if
his life depended on it. He was somehow cut off from forming his ability
into much of anything useful other than to use it for a bit of dim
awareness. Probably a lingering result of the foul-smelling substance they
had pressed over his face to make him lose consciousness.
Since Zedd couldn't muster any power, he did the only thing he could:
he spit in her face.
With lightning speed, she backhanded him, knocking him from the arms of
the men holding him. Unable to use his hands to break his fall, he hit the
ground unexpectedly hard. He lay in the dirt for a time, his ears ringing in
the aftereffect of the hit he'd taken, waiting for someone to lean over and
kill him.
Instead, they hauled him to his feet again. One of the men seized his
hair and pulled his head up, forcing him to look into the woman's face. The
scowl he saw there looked like it spent a great deal of time on her face.
She spit in his face.
Zedd smiled. "So, here we have a spoiled child playing the game of tit
for tat."
Zedd grunted with the sudden shock of a wallop of pain that twisted
inside of his abdomen. Had the men not been holding him under his arms he
would have doubled over and fallen to the ground. He wasn't quite sure how
she had done it--probably with a fist of air delivered with all the power of
her gift behind it. She had left the gathered air loosely formed, rather
than focusing it to a sharp edge, or it would have torn him in two. As it
was, he knew it would leave his middle black and blue.
It was a long and desperate wait before he was able to at last draw a
breath.
The men who his gift said weren't there pulled him straight.
"I'm disappointed to discover I'm in the hands of a sorceress who can
be no more inventive than that," Zedd mocked.
That brought a smile to her scowl. "Don't you worry, Wizard Zo-rander,
His Excellency very much wants your scrawny hide. He will be playing a game
of tit for tat that I believe you will find quite inventive. I have learned
that when it comes to inventive cruelty, His Excellency is peerless. I'm
sure he will not disappoint you."
"Then what are we standing around for? I can't wait to have a word with
His Excellency."
As the men held his head back for her, she ran a fingernail down the
side of his face and across his throat, not hard enough to draw blood, but
enough to hint at her own restrained cruelty. She leaned in again. One
eyebrow lifted in a way that ran a chill up Zedd's spine.
"I imagine you have grand ideas about such a visit, about what you
think you will do or say." She reached out and hooked a finger around
something at his neck. When she gave it a firm tug, he realized that he was
wearing a collar of some sort. By the way it dug into the flesh at the back
of his neck, it had to be metal.
"Guess what this is," she said. "Just guess."
Zedd sighed. "You really are a tedious woman. But I imagine you've
heard that ofttimes before."
She ignored his gibe, eager to be the messenger of bad news. Her
scowling smile widened. "It's a Rada'Han."
Zedd's sense of alarm rose, but he kept any trace of it from his face.
"Really." He paused for an extended, bored yawn. "Well, I'd not expect
a woman of your limited intellect to think up something clever."
She slammed a knee into his groin. Zedd doubled over in pain, unable to
contain his groan. He hadn't been expecting something so crude.
The men pulled him up straight, not allowing him pause to recover.
Being pulled up straight brought a gasp of agony. His teeth were clenched,
his eyes were watering, and his knees wanted to buckle, but the men held him
upright.
Her smile was getting annoying. "You see, Wizard Zorander? Being clever
isn't necessary at all."
Zedd saw her point but didn't say so.
He was already preparing to unlock the cursed collar from his neck.
He'd been "captured" before--by the Prelate herself--and had had a Rada'Han
put around his neck, like some boy born with the gift who needed training.
The Sisters of the Light put such a collar around those boys so that the
gift wouldn't harm them before they could learn to control their gift.
Richard had been captured and put in such a Rada'Han right after his gift
came to life in him.
The collar was also used to control the young wizard wearing it, to
give pain, when the Sisters thought it necessary. Zedd understood the
Prelate's reasons for wanting Richard's help, since they knew he had been
born with both sides of the gift, and, too, they worried about the dark
forces that pursued him, but he could never forgive her for putting Richard
in a collar. A wizard needed to be trained by a wizard, not some misguided
gaggle like the Sisters of the Light.
The Prelate, though, had harbored no delusion of actually training
Richard to be a wizard. She had collared him in order to smoke out the
traitors among her flock: the Sisters of the Dark.
Unlike Richard, though, Zedd knew how to get such a disgusting
contrivance off his neck. In fact, he had done it before, when the Prelate
had thought to collar him and thus force his cooperation.
Zedd used a thread of power to probe at the lock, not overtly, so as
this woman might notice it, but just enough to find the twist in the spell
where he would be able to focus his ability to snap the conjured lock.
When the time was right, when he had his feet solidly under him, when
his head stopped spinning long enough, he would break the collar's hold. In
that same instant, before she knew what had happened, he would release
wizard's fire and incinerate this woman.
She hooked a finger under the collar again and gave it another tug.
"The thing is, my dear wizard, I would expect that a man of your
renowned talent might know how to get such a device off."
"Really? I'm renowned?" Zedd flashed her a grin. "That's very
gratifying."
Her utter contempt brought her a smile of pure disdain. With her finger
through the collar she pulled him close to her twisted expression. She
ignored his words and went on.
"Since His Excellency would be extremely displeased should you get the
collar off, I've taken measures to insure that such a thing would not
happen. I used Subtractive Magic to weld it on."
Now, that was a problem.
She nodded to the men. Zedd glanced to them at each side and noticed
for the first time that their eyes were wet. It shocked him to realize they
were weeping.
Weeping or not, they followed her orders, unceremoniously lifting him
and heaving him in the back of a wagon as if he were firewood.
Zedd landed beside someone else.
"Glad to see you be alive, old man," a soft voice rasped.It was Adie.
The side of her face was swollen and bleeding. It looked like they'd clubbed
her nearly to death. Her wrists were tied behind her back as well. He saw,
too, tears on her cheeks.
It broke his heart to see her hurt. "Adie, what did they do to you?"
She smiled. "Not as much as they intend to, I fear."
In the dim light of a lantern, Zedd could see that she, too, wore one
of the awful collars.
"Your stew was excellent," he said.
Adie groaned. "Please, old man, do not mention food to me right now."
Zedd cautiously turned his head and saw more men waiting in the
darkness off to the side. They had been behind him, so he hadn't noticed
them before. His gift had not told him they were there.
"I think we're in a great deal of trouble," he whispered to no one in
particular.
"Really?" Adie rasped. "What be your first clue?"
Zedd knew she was only trying to make him smile, but he could not even
manage a small one.
"I be sorry, Zedd."
He nodded, as best he could lying on his side with his wrists bound
behind his back. "I thought I was so clever, laying every kind of trap I
could think of. Unfortunately, such traps didn't work for those who are not
affected by magic."
"You could not know of such a thing," Adie said in a comforting tone.
His mood sank into bitter regret. "I should have taken it into account
after we encountered that one down at the Confessors' Palace, in the spring.
I should have realized the danger." He stared off into the darkness. "I
served our cause no better than a fool."
"But where did all of them come from?" She looked on the verge of
losing herself to panic. "I have never encountered a single such person in
my entire life, and now there be a whole gang of them standing there."
Zedd hated to see Adie so distraught. Adie only knew there were a
number of them by the telltale sounds they made. At least he could see the
men with his eyes, if not his gift.
The men stood around, heads hanging, waiting to be commanded.
They didn't look pleased by what was happening. They all looked young,
in their twenties. Some were crying. It seemed strange to see such big men
weeping. Zedd almost regretted killing one of them. Almost.
"You three," the woman growled to more of the men waiting in the
shadows as she lifted another lantern from one of them and sent the flame
she held into it, "get in there and start the search."
Adie's completely white eyes turned to Zedd, her expression grave.
"Sister of the Dark," she whispered.
And now they had the Keep.
And just how can you be sure that it was a Sister of the Dark you saw?"
Verna asked, absently, as she dipped her pen again.
She scrawled her initials at the bottom of the request for a Sister to
travel to a town down south to see to a local sorceress's plans for a
defense of their area. Even in the field, the paperwork of the office of the
Prelate seemed to have chased after and found her. Their palace had been
destroyed, the prophet himself was at large and the real Prelate was off
alone chasing after him, some of the Sisters of the Light had pledged their
souls to the Keeper of the underworld and in so doing had brought the Keeper
a step closer to having them all in the dark forever of eternity, a good
number of the Sisters--both Sisters of the Light and Sisters of the
Dark--were in the cruel hands of the enemy and doing his bidding, the
barrier separating the Old and New World was down, the whole world had been
turned upside down, the only man--Richard Rahl--whom prophecy named as
having a chance of defeating the threat of the Imperial Order was off
who-knew-where doing who-knew-what, and yet, the paperwork managed to
survive it all and persist to vex her.
Some of Verna's assistants handled the paperwork and the requests, but,
as much as she disliked dealing with such tedious matters, Verna felt a
sense of duty to keep an eye on it all. Besides, as much as paperwork vexed
her, it also occupied her mind, preventing her from dwelling on the
might-have-been.
"After all," Verna added, "it could just as easily have been a Sister
of the Light. Jagang uses both for their ability with magic. You can't
really be sure it was a Sister of the Dark. He's been sending Sisters to
accompany his scouts all winter and spring."
The Mord-Sith placed her knuckles on the small desk and leaned in. "I'm
telling you, Prelate, it was a Sister of the Dark."
Verna saw no point in arguing, since it mattered little, so she didn't.
"If you say so, Rikka."
Verna turned over the paper to the next in the stack, a request for a
Sister to come and speak to children on the calling of the Sisters of the
Light, with a lecture on why the Creator would be against the ways of the
Imperial Order and on their side. Verna smiled to herself, imagining how
Zedd would fume at the very idea of a Sister, in the New World, lecturing
her views on such a subject.
Rikka withdrew her knuckles from the desk. "I thought you might say as
much."
"Well, there you go, then," Verna mumbled as she read the next message
from the Sisters of the Light to the south reporting on the passes through
the mountains and the methods that had been used to seal them off.
"Wait right here," Rikka growled before flying out of the tent.
"I'm not going anywhere," Verna said with a sigh as she scanned the
written account, but the fiery, blond-headed woman was already gone.
Verna heard a commotion outside the tent. Rikka was delivering a
scathing lecture to someone. The Mord-Sith was incorrigible. That was
probably why, despite everything, Verna liked her.
Since Warren had died, Verna's heart was no longer in much of anything,
though. She did as she had to, did her duty, but she couldn't make herself
feel anything but despair. The man she loved, the man she had married, the
most wonderful man in the world... was gone.
Nothing much mattered after that.
Verna tried to do her part, to do as was needed, because so many people
depended on her, but, if truth be told, the reason she worked herself nearly
to death was to try to keep her mind occupied, to think of something else,
anything else, except Warren. It didn't really work, but she kept at it. She
knew that people counted on her, but she just couldn't make herself truly
care.
Warren was gone. Life was empty of what mattered most to her. That was
the end of it, the end of her caring about much of anything.
Verna idly pulled her journey book from her belt. She didn't know what
made her do so, except perhaps that it had been some time since she had last
looked for a message from the real Prelate. Ann was having her own crisis of
caring ever since Kahlan had laid the blame for so much of what had gone
wrong, including being the cause of the war itself, right at the Prelate's
feet. Verna thought that Kahlan had been wrong about much of it, but she
understood all too well why she thought that Ann had been responsible for
tangling up their lives; Verna had felt the same way for a time.
Holding the journey book off to the side with one hand, flipping the
pages with a thumb, Verna saw a message flash by.
Rikka swept back into the tent. She plunked a heavy sack down on
Verna's desk, right on top of the reports.
"Here!" Rikka said, fury powering her voice.
It was then, when Verna looked up, that she saw for the first time the
strange way Rikka was dressed. Verna's mouth fell open. Rikka was not
wearing the skintight red leather that the Mord-Sith typically wore, except
for occasionally when they were relaxing and then they sometimes wore brown
leather, instead. Verna had never seen the woman in anything other than
those leather outfits.
Now Rikka had on a dress.
Verna could not remember being so astonished.
Not just a dress, but a pink dress that no decent woman of Rikka's age,
probably her late twenties or early thirties, would be caught dead in. The
neckline plunged down to reveal ample cleavage. The twin mounds of exposed
flesh were shoved up and nearly spilling out the top. Verna was amazed that
Rikka's nipples had managed to remain covered, what with the way her breasts
heaved with her heated breathing.
"You, too?" Rikka snapped.
Verna finally looked up into Rikka's blazing blue eyes. "Me, too,
what?"
"You, too, can't get enough of looking at my chest?"
Verna felt her face go scarlet. She gave her red face an excuse by
shaking a finger at the woman.
"What are you doing dressed like that in an army camp! Around all these
soldiers! You look like a whore!"
Despite how their leather outfits went all the way up to their necks,
the tight leather left little to the imagination. Seeing the woman's flesh,
though, was altogether different, and quite shocking.
Verna realized, only then, because she had finally looked up at the
woman's face, that Rikka's single braid was undone. Her long blond hair was
as free as a horse's mane. Verna had never seen one of the Mord-Sith out in
public without her hair done up in the single braid that in large part
identified their profession of Mord-Sith.
Even seeing the woman's cleavage exposed was not as shocking as seeing
her hair undone. It was that, more than anything, Verna realized, that lent
a lewd look to the woman. Something about her braid being undone seemed
sacrilegious, even though Verna could not condone a profession dedicated to
torture.
Verna remembered, then, that she had asked one of the Mord-Sith, Cara,
to do her worst to the young man--a boy, really--who had murdered Warren.
Verna had sat up the entire night listening to that young man scream his
life away. His suffering had been monstrous, and yet it had not been nearly
enough to suit her.
At times, Verna wondered if in the next life the Keeper of the
underworld would have something wholly unpleasant in store for her for all
eternity in recompense for what Verna had done. She didn't really care; it
had been worth whatever the price might be.
Besides, she decided, if she was to be punished for condemning that man
to just retribution, then the very concept of justice would have to be
invalid, rendering living a life of good or evil to have no meaning. In
fact, for the justice she had meted out to that vile amoral animal walking
the world of life in the form of a man who had murdered Warren, she should
be rewarded in the afterlife by being eternally in the warmth of the
Creator's light, along with the good spirit of Warren, or else there was no
justice.
General Meiffert swept into the tent, fists at his sides, coming to a
halt beside Rikka. He raked his blond hair back when he saw Verna sitting
behind her little desk, and cooled visibly.
He'd had the carpenters nail together the tiny desk for her out of
scrap furniture left in an abandoned farm. It was nothing like the desks at
the Palace of the Prophets, of course, but it had been given with more
concern and meaning behind it than the grandest gold-leafed desk she had
ever seen. General Meiffert had been proud at seeing how useful Verna found
it.
With a quick glance, he took in Rikka's dress and her hair. "What's
this about?"
"Well," Verna said, "I'm not sure. Something about one of Jagang's
Sisters scouting a pass."
Rikka folded her bare arms atop her nearly bare bosom. "Not just a
Sister, but a Sister of the Dark."
"Jagang has been sending Sisters scouting the passes all winter," the
young general said. "The Prelate has laid traps and shields." His level of
concern rose. "Are you telling us that one of them got through?"
"No, I'm telling you that I went hunting for them."
Verna frowned. "What are you talking about? We lost half a dozen
Mord-Sith trying that. After you found the heads of two of your sister
Mord-Sith mounted on pikes, the Mother Confessor herself ordered you to stop
throwing their lives away on such useless missions."
Rikka at last smiled. It was the kind of satisfied smile, especially
coming from a Mord-Sith, that tended to give people nightmares.
"Does this look useless?"
Rikka reached into her sack and pulled out a human head. Holding it by
the hair, she brandished it in front of Verna's face. She turned, shook it
at General Meiffert as well, and then plunked it down on the desk. Gore
oozed out over the reports.
"Like I said, a Sister of the Dark."
Verna recognized the face, even as twisted in death as it was. Rikka
was right, it was a Sister of the Dark. The question was, how did she know
it was a Sister of the Dark, and not one of the Light?
Outside Verna could hear horses clopping past her tent. Some of the
soldiers called out greetings to men returning from patrols. In the distance
could be heard conversations and men issuing orders. Hammers on steel rang
like bells as men worked hot metal into useful shapes for repairs to
equipment. Nearby, horses frisked in a corral. As men made their way past
Verna's tent, their gear jingled. Fires crackled as wood was added for the
cooks or roared as bellows pumped to turn it white-hot for the blacksmiths.
"You touched her with your Agiel?" Verna asked in a quiet voice. "Your
Agiel doesn't work effectively on those the dream walker controls."
Rikka's smile turned sly. She spread her arms. "Agiel? Do you see an
Agiel."
Verna knew that no Mord-Sith would ever let her Agiel out of her
control. With a glance to the woman's cleavage, she could only imagine where
she had it hidden.
"All right," General Meiffert said, his tone no longer indulgent. "I
want to know what's going on, and I want to know right now."
"I was down near Dobbin Pass, checking around, and what do I find but
an Imperial Order patrol."
The general nodded as he let out a frustrated sigh. "They've been
coming in that way from time to time. But how did you manage to come across
such an enemy patrol? Why hadn't one of our Sisters already snared them?"
Rikka shrugged. "Well, this patrol was still on the other side of the
pass. Back at that deserted farm." She tapped Verna's desk with her toe.
"Where you got the wood for this."
Verna twisted her mouth with displeasure. Rikka wasn't supposed to be
beyond the pass. The Mord-Sith, though, recognized no orders but those from
Lord Rahl himself. Rikka had only followed Kahlan's orders because, during
his absence, Kahlan was acting on Richard's behalf. Verna suspected that it
was simpler than that, though; she suspected that they had only followed the
Mother Confessor's orders because she was wife to Lord Rahl, and if they
didn't it would bring Lord Rahl's wrath down on them. As long as such orders
weren't viewed by the Mord-Sith as troublesome, they went along. When they
decided otherwise, they did as they wished.
"The Sister was by herself," Rikka went on, "having one
powerful-looking headache."
"Jagang," Verna said. "Jagang was issuing his order, or punishing her
for something, or giving her a lecture in her mind. He does that from time
to time. It isn't pleasant."
Rikka stroked the hair on the woman's head sitting on Verna's desk,
making a mess of the reports. "The poor thing," she mocked. "While she was
off among the pines staring at nothing while she pressed her fingers to her
temples, her men were back at the farmhouse, having their way with a couple
of young women. The two were squealing and crying and carrying on, but the
men weren't put off by it any."
Verna lowered her eyes as she let out a heavy breath. Some people had
refused to believe the necessity of fleeing before the arrival of the
Imperial Order.
Sometimes, when people refused to recognize the existence of evil, they
found themselves having to face precisely that which they had never been
willing to admit existed.
Rikka's satisfied smile returned. "I went in and took care of the brave
soldiers of the Imperial Order. They were so distracted, they paid no
attention as I snuck up behind them. The women were so terrorized that they
screamed even though I was saving them. The Sister hadn't been paying any
attention to the screaming before, and didn't then, either.
"One of the young women was blond and about my size, so an idea struck
me. I put on her dress and took out my braid, so I might be mistaken for
her. I gave the one girl some of the men's clothes to wear and told them
both to run for the hills, in the opposite direction of the Sister, and not
to look back. I didn't have to tell them twice. Then I sat down on a stool
outside the barn.
"Sure enough, in a while the Sister came back. She saw me sitting
there, hanging my head, pretending to be crying. She thought the other woman
was still inside, with the men. She said, 'It's time those foolish bastards
in there were done with you and your friend. His Excellency wants a report,
and he wants it now--he's ready to move.' "
Verna came up out of her chair. "You heard her say that?"
"Yes."
"Then what?" General Meiffert asked.
"Then the Sister made for the side door into the barn. When she stormed
past me, I rose up behind her and cut her throat with one of the men's
knives."
General Meiffert leaned toward Rikka. "You cut her throat? You didn't
use your Agiel?"
Rikka gave him a look that suggested she thought he hadn't been paying
attention. "Like the Prelate said, an Agiel doesn't work very well on those
the dream walker controls. So I used a knife. Dream walker or not, cutting
her throat worked just fine."
Rikka lifted the head before Verna again. One of the reports stuck to
the bottom of it as it swung by the hair. "I sliced the knife through her
throat and around her neck. She was thrashing about quite a bit, so I had a
good hold on her as she died. All of a sudden, there was an instant when the
whole world went black--and I mean black, black as the Keeper's heart. It
was as if the underworld had suddenly taken us all."
Verna looked away from the head of a Sister she had known for a very
long time and had always believed was devoted to the Creator, to the light
of life. She had been devoted, instead, to death.
"The Keeper came to claim one of his own," Verna explained in a quiet
voice.
"Well," Rikka said, rather sarcastically, Verna thought, "I didn't
think that when a Sister of the Light died such a thing happened. I told you
it was a Sister of the Dark."
Verna nodded. "So you did."
General Meiffert gave the Mord-Sith a hurried clap on the back of the
shoulder. "Thanks, Rikka. I'd better spread the word. If Jagang is starting
to move, it won't be many days before he's here. We need to be sure the
passes are ready when his force finally gets here."
"The passes will hold," Verna said. She let out a silent sigh. "At
least for a while."
The Order had to come across the mountains if they were to conquer
D'Hara. There were few ways across those formidable mountains.
Verna and the Sisters had shielded and sealed those passes as well as
it was possible to seal them. They had used magic to bring down walls of
rock in places, making the narrow roads impassable. In other places, they
had used their power to cleave away roads cut into the steep sides of
mountains, leaving no way through, except to clamber over rubble. To prevent
that, and in other places, the men had worked all winter constructing stone
walls across the passes. Atop those walls were fortifications from which
they could rain down death on the narrow passes below. Additionally, in
every one of those places, the Sisters had set snares of magic so deadly
that coming through would be a bloody ordeal that would only get worse, and
that was before they encountered the walls lined with defenders.
Jagang had Sisters of the Dark to try to undo the barriers of both
magic and stone, but Verna was more powerful, in the Additive anyway, than
any of them. Besides that, she had joined her power with other Sisters in
order to invest in those barriers magic that she knew would prove
formidable.
Still, Jagang would come. Nothing Verna, her Sisters, and the D'Haran
army could do would ultimately be able to withstand the numbers Jagang would
throw at them. If he had to command his men to march through passes filled a
hundred feet deep with their fallen comrades, he would not flinch from doing
so. Nor would it matter to him if the corpses were a thousand feet deep.
"I'll be back a little later, Verna," the general said. "We'll need to
get the officers and some of the Sisters together and make sure everything
is ready."
"Yes, of course," Verna said.
Both General Meiffert and Rikka started to leave.
"Rikka," Verna called. She gestured down at the desk. "Take the dear
departed Sister with you, would you please?"
Rikka sighed, which nearly spilled her bosom out of the dress. She made
a long-suffering face before snatching up the head and vanishing out of the
tent behind the general.
Verna sat down and put her head in her hands. It was going to start all
over again. It had been a long and peaceful, if bitterly cold, winter.
Jagang had made his winter encampment on the other side of the mountains,
far enough away that, with the snow and cold, it was difficult to launch
effective raids against his troops. Just as it had the summer before, the
summer Warren had died, now that the weather was favorable, the Order would
begin to move. It was starting all over again. The killing, the terror, the
fighting, running, hunger, exhaustion.
But what choice was there, other than to be killed. In many ways, life
had come to seem worse than death.
Verna abruptly remembered, then, about the journey book. She worked it
out of the pocket in her belt and pulled the lamp closer, needing the
comfort as well as the light. She wondered where Richard and Kahlan were, if
they were safe, and she thought, too, about Zedd and Adie all alone guarding
the Wizard's Keep. Unlike everyone else, at least Zedd and Adie were safe
and at peace where they were--for the time being, anyway. Sooner or later,
D'Hara would fall and then Jagang would return to Aydindril.
Verna tossed the small black book on the desk, smoothed her dress
beneath her legs, and scooted her chair closer. She ran her fingers over the
familiar leather cover on an object of magic that was over three thousand
years old. The journey books had been invested with magic by those
mysterious wizards who so long ago had built the Palace of the Prophets. A
journey book was twinned, and as such, they were priceless; what was written
in one appeared at the same time in its twin. In that way, the Sisters could
communicate over vast distances and know important information as it
happened, rather than weeks or even months later.
Ann, the real Prelate, had the twin to Verna's.
Verna, herself, had been sent by Ann on a journey of nearly twenty
years to find Richard. Ann had known all along where Richard had been. It
was for that reason that Verna could understand Kahlan's rage at how Ann had
seemed to twist her and Richard's life. But Verna had come to understand
that the Prelate had sent her on what was actually a mission of vital
importance, one that had brought change to the world, but also brought hope
for the future.
Verna opened the journey book, holding it a little sideways to see the
words in the light.
Verna, Ann wrote, / believe I have discovered where the prophet is
hiding.
Verna sat back in surprise. After the palace had been destroyed,
Nathan, the prophet, had escaped their control and had since been roaming
free, a profound danger.
For the last couple of years, the rest of the Sisters of the Light had
believed that the Prelate and the prophet were dead. Ann, when she'd left
the Palace of the Prophets with Nathan on an important mission, had feigned
their deaths and named Verna Prelate to succeed her. Very few people other
than Verna, Zedd, Richard, and Kahlan knew the truth. During that mission,
however, Nathan had managed to get his collar off and escape Ann's control.
There was no telling what catastrophe that man could cause.
Verna leaned over the journey book again.
/ should have Nathan within days, now. I can hardly believe that after
all this time, I nearly have my hands on that man. I will let you know soon.
How are you, Verna? How are you feeling? How are the Sisters and how go
matters with the army? Write when you can. I will be checking my journey
book nightly. I miss you terribly.
Verna sat back again. That was all there was. But it was enough. The
very notion of Ann finally capturing Nathan made Verna's head swim with
relief.
Even that momentous news, though, failed to do much to lift her mood.
Jagang was about to launch his attack on D'Hara and Ann was about to finally
have Nathan under control, but Richard was somewhere off to the south,
beyond their control. Ann had worked for five hundred years to shape events
so that Richard could lead them in the battle for the future of mankind, and
now, on the eve of what could very well prove to be that final battle, he
was not there with them.
Verna drew the stylus out of the journey book's spine and leaned over
to write Ann a report.
My dearest Ann, I'm afraid that things here are about to become very
unpleasant.
The siege of the passes into D'Hara is about to begin.
The sprawling corridors of the People's Palace, seat of power in
D'Hara, were filled with the whisper of footsteps on stone. Ann pushed
herself back a little on the white marble bench where she sat stuffed
between three women on one side and an older couple on the other, all
gossiping about what people were wearing as they strolled the grand halls,
or what other people did while they were here, or what they most wanted to
see. Ann supposed that such gossip was harmless enough and probably meant to
take people's minds off the worries of the war. Still, it was hard to
believe that at such a late hour people would rather be out gossiping than
in a warm bed asleep.
Ann kept her head down and pretended to be pawing through her travel
bag while at the same time keeping a wary eye on the soldiers passing not
too far away as they patrolled. She didn't know if her caution was
necessary, but she would rather not find out too late that it was.
"Come from far?" the closest woman beside her asked.
Ann looked up, realizing that the woman had spoken to her. "Well, yes,
I guess it has been a bit of a journey."
Ann put her nose back in her bag and rummaged in earnest, hoping to be
left alone.
The woman, middle-aged with her curls of brown hair just starting to
carry a bit of gray, smiled. "I'm not all that far from home, myself, but I
do so like to spend a night at the palace, now and then, just to lift my
spirits."
Ann glanced around at the polished marble floors, the glossy red stone
columns below arches, decorated with carved vines, that supported the upper
balconies. She gazed up at the skylights that allowed the light to flood in
the place during the day, and peered off at the grand statues that stood on
pedestals around a fountain with life-sized stone horses galloping forever
through a shimmering spray of water.
"Yes, I see what you mean," Ann murmured.
The place didn't lift her spirits. In fact, the place made her as
nervous as a cat in a doghouse with the door closed. She could feel that her
power was frighteningly diminished in this place.
The People's Palace was more than any mere palace. It was a city all
joined together and under countless roofs atop a huge plateau. Tens of
thousands of people lived in the magnificent structure, and thousands more
visited it daily. There were different levels to the palace itself, some
where people had shops and sold goods, others where officials worked, some
that were living quarters. Many sections were off limits to those who
visited.
Sprawled around the base of the plateau were informal markets where
people gathered to buy, sell, and trade goods. On the climb all the way up
through the interior of the plateau to reach the palace itself, Ann had
passed many permanent shops. The palace was a center of trade, drawing
people from all over D'Hara.
More than that, though, it was the ancestral home of the House of Rahl.
As such, it was grand for arcane reasons beyond the awareness or even
understanding of most of the people who called it home or visited it. The
People's Palace was a spell--not a place spelled, as had been the Palace of
the Prophets where Ann had spent most of her life. The place itself was the
spell.
The entire palace had been built to a careful and precise design: that
of a spell drawn on the face of the ground. The outer fortified walls
contained the actual spell form and the major congregations of rooms formed
significant hubs, while the halls and corridors themselves were the drawn
lines--the essence of the spell itself, the power.
Like a spell being drawn in the dirt with the point of a stick, the
halls would have had to have been built in the sequence required by the
specific magic the spell was intended to invoke. It would have been
enormously expensive to build it in that manner, ignoring the typical
requirements of construction and accepted methods of the trade of building,
but only by doing so would the spell work, and work it did.
The spell was specific. It was a place of safety for any Rahl. It was
meant to give a Rahl more power in the place, and to leach power away from
anyone else who entered. Ann had never been in a place where she felt such a
waning of her Han, the essence of life and the gift within. She doubted that
in this place her Han would for long be vital enough to light a candle.
Ann's jaw dropped in astonishment as another element of the spell
abruptly occurred to her. She looked out at the halls--part of the lines of
the spell--filled with people.
Spells drawn with blood were always more effective and powerful. But
when the blood soaked into the ground, decomposed, and dissipated, the power
of the spell would often fade as well. But this spell, the drawn lines of
the spell itself--the corridors--were filled with the vital living blood of
all the people moving through them. Ann was struck dumb with awe at such a
brilliant concept.
"So, you're renting a room, then."
Ann had forgotten the woman beside her, still staring at her, still
holding the smile on her painted lips. Ann forced herself to close her
mouth.
"Well. . ." Ann finally admitted, "I haven't actually made arrangements
yet as to where I will sleep."
The woman's smile persisted, but it looked as if it was taking more and
more effort all the time. "You can't curl up on a bench, you know. The
guards won't allow it. You have to rent a room, or be put out at night."
Ann understood, then, what the woman was driving at. To these people,
most dressed in their finest clothes for their visit to the palace, Ann must
look like a beggar in their midst. After all the gossip about what people
were wearing, this woman must have been disconcerted to find herself beside
Ann.
"I have the price of a room," Ann assured her. "I just haven't found
where they are, yet, that's all. After such a long journey, I meant to go
there right away and get myself cleaned up, but I just needed to rest my
weary feet for a bit, first. Could you tell me where to find the rooms to
rent?"
The smile looked a little easier. "I'm off to my own room and I could
take you. It isn't far."
"That would be kind of you," Ann said as she rose now that she saw the
guards moving off down the corridor.
The woman stood, bidding her two benchmates a good night.
If Ann was tired, it was only from being caught up in the afternoon
devotion to the Lord Rahl. A bell in an open square had tolled, and everyone
had moved to gather there and bow down. Ann had noticed then that no one
missed the devotion. Guards moved among the crowd watching people gather.
She felt like a mouse being watched by hawks so she joined with the other
people moving toward the square.
She had spent nearly two hours on her knees, on a hard clay tile floor,
bowed down with her forehead touching the ground like everyone else,
repeating the devotion in concert with all the other somber voices.
Master Rahl guide us. Master Rahl teach us. Master Rahl protect us. In
your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are
humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.
Twice a day, those in the palace were expected to go to the devotion.
Ann didn't know how people endured such torture.
Then she remembered the bond between the Lord Rahl and his people that
prevented the dream walker from entering their minds, and she knew how they
could endure it. She, herself, had briefly been a prisoner of Emperor
Jagang. He murdered a Sister right before her eyes, just to make a point.
In the face of brutality and torture, she guessed that she knew how
people endured a mere devotion.
For her, though, such a spoken devotion to the Lord Rahl, to Richard,
was hardly necessary. She had been devoted to him for nearly five hundred
years before he had even been born.
Prophecy said that Richard was their only chance to avoid catastrophe.
Ann peered carefully around the halls. Now she just needed the prophet
himself.
"This way," the woman said, tugging at Ann's sleeve.
The woman gestured for Ann to follow her down a hallway to the right.
Ann pulled her shawl forward, covering the pack she carried, and hugged her
travel bag closer as she followed along the wide corridor. She wondered how
many people sitting on benches and low marble walls around fountains were
gossiping about her.
The floor had a dizzying pattern of dark brown, rust, and pale
tan-colored stone running across the hall in zigzag lines meant to look
three-dimensional. Ann had seen such traditional patterns before, down in
the Old World, but none of this grand scale. It was a work of art, and it
was but the floor. Everything about the palace was exquisite.
Shops were set back under a mezzanine to each side. Some of them looked
to sell items travelers might want. There was a variety of small food and
drink stands, everything from hot meat pies, to sweets, to ale, to warm
milk. Some places sold nightclothes. Others sold hair ribbons. Even at this
late hour, some of the shops were still open and doing brisk business. In a
place such as this, there would be people who worked at night and would have
need of such shops. The places that offered to do up a woman's hair, or
paint her face, or promised to do wonders with her fingernails, were all
closed until morning. Ann doubted they could pull off wonders with her.
The woman cleared her throat as they strolled down the broad corridor,
gazing at the shops to each side. "And where have you traveled from?"
"Oh, far to the south. Very far." Ann took note of the woman's focused
attention as she leaned in a bit. "My sister lives here," Ann said, giving
the woman something more to chew on. "I'm here to visit my sister. She
advises Lord Rahl on important matters."
The woman's eyebrows lifted. "Really! An advisor to Lord Rahl himself.
What an honor for your family."
"Yes," Ann drawled. "We're all proud of her."
"What does she advise him on?"
"Advise him on? Oh, well, matters of war."
The woman's mouth fell open. "A woman? Advising Lord Rahl on warfare?"
"Oh yes," Ann insisted. She leaned over and whispered, "She's a
sorceress. Sees into the future, you know. Why, she wrote me a letter and
told me she saw me coming to the palace for a visit. Isn't that amazing?"
The woman frowned a bit. "Well, that does seem rather remarkable, since
here you are and all."
"Yes, and she told me that I'd meet a helpful woman."
The woman's smile returned, it again looked forced. "She sounds to be
quite talented."
"Oh, you have no idea," Ann insisted. "She is so specific in her
forecasts about the future."
"Really? Had she anything else to say about your visit, then? Anything
specific?"
"Oh yes indeed. Why, do you know that she told me I would meet a man
when I came here?"
The woman's gaze flicked around the halls. "There are a lot of men
here. That hardly seems very specific. Surely, she must have said more than
that... I mean, if she is so talented, and an advisor to Lord Rahl and all."
Ann put a finger to her lip, frowning in feigned effort at
recollection. "Why, yes, she did, now that you mention it. Let's see if I
can remember ..." Ann laid a hand on the woman's arm in a familiar manner.
"She tells me about my future all the time. My sister is always telling me
so many things about my future in her letters that I sometimes feel as if
I'm having trouble catching up with my own life! I sometimes have trouble
remembering it all."
"Oh do try," the woman said, eager for the gossip. "This is so
fascinating."
Ann returned the finger to her lower lip as she gazed at the ceiling,
pretending to be engaged in deep thought, and noticed for the first time
that the ceiling was painted like the sky, with clouds and all. The effect
was quite clever.
"Well," Ann finally said when she was sure she had the woman's full
attention, "my sister said that the man I would meet was old." She returned
the hand to the woman's arm. "But very distinguished. Not old and decrepit,
but tall--very tall--with a full head of white hair that comes all the way
down to his broad shoulders. She said that he would be clean-shaven, and
that he would be ruggedly handsome, with penetrating dark azure eyes."
"Dark azure eyes ... my, my," the woman tittered, "but he does sound
handsome."
"And she said that when he looks at a woman with those hawklike eyes of
his, their knees want to buckle."
"That is precise," the woman said, her face getting flushed. "Too bad
she didn't know this handsome fellow's name."
"Oh, but she did. What kind of advisor to the Lord Rahl would she be if
she wasn't talented enough to know such things."
"She told his name, too? She can really do such tellings of the
future?"
"Oh my yes," Ann assured her.
She strolled along for a time, watching people making their way up and
down the hall, stopping at some of the shops that were still open, or
sitting on benches, gossiping.
"And?" the woman asked. "What is the name your sister foretold? The
name of this tall distinguished gentleman."
Ann frowned up at the ceiling again. "It was N something. Nigel or
Norris, or something. No, wait--that wasn't it." Ann snapped her finger and
thumb. "The name she said was Nathan."
"Nathan," the woman repeated, looking almost as if she had been ready
to pluck the name off Ann's tongue if she didn't spit it out. "Nathan."
"Yes, that's it. Nathan. Do you know anyone here at the palace by that
name? Nathan? A tall fellow, older, with long white hair, broad shoulders,
azure eyes?"
The woman peered up at the ceiling in thought. This time it was Ann
leaning in, waiting for word, watching intently for any reaction.
A hand seized Ann's dress at her shoulder and brought her to an abrupt
halt. Ann and the woman turned.
Behind them stood a very tall woman, with a very long blond braid, with
very blue eyes, wearing a very dark scowl and an outfit of very red leather.
The woman beside Ann went as pale as vanilla pudding. Her mouth fell
open. Ann forced her own mouth to stay shut.
"We've been expecting you," the woman in red leather said.
Behind her, back up the hallway a short distance, spread out to block
the hall, stood a dozen perfectly huge men in perfect leather armor carrying
perfectly polished swords, knives, and lances.
"Why, I think you must have me mistaken for--"
"I don't make mistakes."
Ann wasn't nearly as tall as the blond woman in red leather. She hardly
came up past the yellow crescent and star across her stomach.
"No, I don't suppose you do. What's this about?" Ann asked, losing the
timid innocent tone.
"Wizard Rahl wanted us to bring you in."
"Wizard Rahl?"
"Yes. Wizard Nathan Rahl."
Ann heard a gasp from the woman beside her. She thought the woman was
going to faint, and so took hold of her arm.
"Are you all right, my dear?"
She stared, wide-eyed, at the woman in red leather glowering down at
her. "Yes. I have to go. I'm late. I must go. Can I go?"
"Yes, you had better go," the tall blonde said.
The woman dipped a quick bow and muttered "Good night" before scurrying
off down the hall, looking over her shoulder only once.
Ann turned back to the scowl. "Well I'm glad you found me. Let's be off
to see Nathan. Excuse me ... Wizard Rahl."
"You won't be having an audience with Wizard Rahl."
"You mean, not tonight, I won't be having an ... audience with him
tonight."
Ann was being as polite as she could be, but she wanted to clobber that
troublesome man, or wring his neck, and the sooner the better.
"My name is Nyda," the woman said.
"Pleased to meet--"
"Do you know what I am?" She didn't wait for Ann to answer. "I am
Mord-Sith. I give you this one warning as a courtesy. It is the only
warning, or courtesy, you will receive, so listen closely. You came here
with hostile intent against Wizard Rahl. You are now my prisoner. Use of
your magic against a Mord-Sith will result in the capture of that magic by
me or one of my sister Mord-Sith and its use as a weapon against you. A
very, very unpleasant weapon."
"Well," Ann said, "in this place my magic is not very useful, I'm
afraid. Hardly worth a hoot, as a matter of fact. So, you see, I'm quite
harmless."
"I don't care how useful you find your magic. If you try to so much as
light a candle with it, your power will be mine."
"I see," Ann said.
"Don't believe me?" Nyda leaned down. "I encourage you to try to attack
me. I haven't captured a sorceress's magic for quite a while. Might be ...
fun."
"Thank you, but I'm a bit too tired out--from my travels and all--to be
attacking anyone just now. Maybe later?"
Nyda smiled. In that smile Ann could see why Mord-Sith were so feared.
"Fine. Later, then."
"So, what is it you intend to do with me in the meantime, Nyda? Put me
up in one of the palace's fine rooms?"
Nyda ignored the question and gestured with a tilt of her head. Two of
the men a short way back up the hall rushed forward. They towered over Ann
like two oak trees. Each grasped her under an arm.
"Let's go," Nyda said as she marched off down the hall ahead of them.
The men started out after her, pulling Ann along with them. Her feet
seemed to touch the floor only every third or fourth step. People in the
hall parted for the Mord-Sith. Passersby pressed themselves up against the
walls to the side, a goodly distance away. Some people disappeared into the
open shops, from where they peered out windows. Everyone stared at the squat
woman in the dark dress being hauled along by the two palace guards in
burnished leather and gleaming mail. Behind she could hear the jangle of
metal gear as the rest of the men followed along.
They turned into a small hall to the side going back between columns
holding a projecting balcony. One of the men rushed forward to unlock the
door. Before she knew it, they'd all swept through the little door like wine
through a funnel.
The corridor beyond was dark and cramped--nothing like the marble-lined
hallways most people saw. Not far down the hall, they turned down a
stairway. The oak treads creaked underfoot. Some of the men handed lanterns
forward so Nyda could light her way. The sound of all the footsteps echoed
back from the darkness below.
At the bottom of the steps, Nyda led them through a maze of dirty stone
passageways. The seldom-used halls smelled musty, and in places damp. When
they reached another stairwell, they continued down a square shaft with
landings at each turn, descending into the dark recesses of the People's
Palace. Ann wondered how many people in the past were taken by routes such
as this, never to be seen again. Richard's father, Darken Rahl, and his
father before him, Panis, were rather fond of torture. Life meant nothing to
men such as those.
Richard had changed all that.
But Richard wasn't at the palace, now. Nathan was.
Ann had known Nathan for a very long time--for nearly a thousand years.
For most of that time, as Prelate, she had kept him locked in his
apartments. Prophets could not be allowed to roam free. Now, though, this
one was free. And, worse, he had managed to establish his authority in the
palace--the ancestral home of the House of Rahl. He was an ancestor to
Richard. He was a Rahl. He was a wizard.
Ann's plan suddenly started to seem very foolish. Just catch the
prophet off guard, she'd thought. Catch him off guard and snap a collar back
around his neck. Surely, there would be an opening and he would be hers
again.
It had seemed to make sense at the time.
At the bottom of the long descent, Nyda swept to the right, following a
narrow walk with a stone wall soaring up on the right and an iron railing on
the left. Ann gazed off over the railing, but the lantern light showed
nothing but inky darkness below. She feared to think how far it might
drop--not that she had any ideas of a battle with her captors, but she was
beginning to worry that they just might heave her over the edge and be done
with her.
Nathan had sent them, though. Nathan, as irascible as he could
sometimes be, wouldn't order such a thing. Ann considered, then, the
centuries she had kept him locked away, considered the extreme measures it
had sometimes taken to keep that incorrigible man under control. Ann glanced
over the iron rail again, down into the darkness.
"Will Nathan be waiting for us?" she asked, trying to sound cheerful.
"I'd really like to talk to him. We have business we must discuss."
Nyda shot a dark look back over her shoulder. "Nathan has nothing to
talk to you about."
At an uncomfortably narrow passageway tunneling into the stone on the
right, Nyda led them into the darkness. The way the woman rushed lent a
frightening aspect to an already frightening journey.
Ann at last saw light up ahead. The narrow passageway emptied into a
small area where several halls converged. Ahead and to the right they all
funneled down steep stairs that twisted as they descended. As she was
prodded down the stairs, Ann gripped the iron rail, fearful of losing her
footing, although the big hand holding a fistful of her dress at her right
shoulder would probably preclude any chance of falling, to say nothing of
running off.
In the passageway at the bottom of the stairs, Nyda, Ann, and the
guards came to a halt under the low-beamed ceiling. Wavering light from
torches in floor stands gave the low area a surreal look. The place stank of
burning pitch, smoke, stale sweat, and urine. Ann doubted that any fresh air
ever penetrated this deep into the People's Palace.
She heard a hacking cough echoing from a dim corridor to the right. She
peered into that dark hall and saw doors to either side. In some of the
doors fingers gripped iron bars in small openings. Other than the coughing,
no sound came from the cells holding hopeless men.
A big man in uniform waited before an iron-bound door to the left. He
looked as if he might have been hewn from the same stone as the walls. Under
different circumstances, Ann might have thought that he was a pleasant
enough looking fellow.
"Nyda," the man said by way of greeting. When his eyes turned back up
after a polite bow of his head, he asked in his deep voice, "What have we
here?"
"A prisoner for you, Captain Lerner." Nyda seized the empty shoulder of
Ann's dress and hauled her forward as if showing off a pheasant after a
successful hunt. "A dangerous prisoner."
The captain's appraising gaze glided briefly over Ann before he
returned his attention to Nyda. "One of the secure chambers, then."
Nyda nodded her approval. "Wizard Rahl doesn't want her getting out. He
said she's no end of trouble."
At least half a dozen curt responses sprang to mind, but Ann held her
tongue.
"You had better come with us, then," Captain Lerner said, "and see to
her being locked in behind the shields."
Nyda tilted her head. Two of her men dashed forward and pulled torches
from stands. The captain finally found the right key from a dozen or so he
had on a ring. The lock sprang open with a strident clang that filled the
surrounding low corridors. It sounded to Ann like a bell being tolled for
the condemned.
With a grunt of effort, the captain tugged the heavy door, urging it to
slowly swing open. In the long hallway beyond, Ann saw but a couple of
candles bringing meager light to the small openings in doors to each side.
Men began hooting and howling, like animals, calling vile curses at who
might be entering their world. Arms reached out, clawing the air, hoping to
net a touch of a passing person.
The two men with torches swept into the hall right behind Nyda, the
firelight illuminating her in her red leather so all those faces pressed up
against the openings in their doors could see her. Her Agiel, hanging on a
fine chain at her wrist, spun up into her fist. She glared at the openings
in the doors to each side. Filthy arms drew back in. Voices fell silent. Ann
could hear men scurry to the far recesses of their cells.
Nyda, once certain there would be no misbehavior, started out again.
Big hands shoved Ann ahead. Behind, Captain Lerner followed with his keys.
Ann pulled the corner of her shawl over her mouth and nose, trying to block
the sickening stench.
The captain took a small lamp from a recess, lit it from a candle to
the side, and then stepped forward to unlock another door. In the low
passageway beyond, the doors were spaced closer together. A hand covered
with infected lesions hung limp out of one of the tiny openings to the side.
The hall beyond the next door was lower, and no wider than Ann's
shoulders. She tried to slow her racing heart as she followed the rough,
twisting passageway. Nyda and the men had to stoop, arms folded in, as they
made their way.
"Here," Captain Lerner said as he came to a halt.
He held up his lantern and peered into the small opening in the door.
On the second try, he found the right key and unlocked the door. He handed
his small lamp to Nyda and then used both hands to pull the lever. He
grunted and tugged with all his weight until the door grated partway open.
He squeezed around the door and disappeared inside.
Nyda handed in the lamp as she followed the captain in. Her arm,
sheathed in red leather, came back out to seize a fistful of Ann's dress and
drag her in after.
The captain was opening a second door on the other side of the tiny
room. Ann could sense that this was the room containing the shield. The
second door grated open. Beyond was a room carved from solid bedrock. The
only way out was through the door, and the outer room that contained the
shield, and then the second door.
The House of Rahl knew how to build a secure dungeon.
Nyda's hand gripped Ann's elbow, commanding her into the room beyond.
Even Ann, as short as she was, had to duck as she stepped over the high sill
to get through the doorway. The only furniture inside was a bench carved
from the stone of the far wall itself, providing both a seat and a bed off
the floor. A tin ewer full of water sat on one end of the bench. At the
opposite end was a single, folded, brown blanket. There was a chamber pot in
the corner. At least it was empty, if not clean.
Nyda set the lamp on the bench. "Nathan said to leave you this."
Obviously it was a luxury the other guests weren't afforded.
Nyda stepped one leg over the sill, but paused when Ann called her
name.
"Please give Nathan a message for me? Please? Tell him that I would
like to see him. Tell him that it's important."
Nyda smiled to herself. "He said you would say those words. Nathan is a
prophet, I guess he would know what you would say."
"And will you give him that message?"
Nyda's cold blue eyes looked to be weighing Ann's soul. "Nathan said to
tell you that he has a whole palace to run, and can't come running down to
see you every time you clamor for him."
Those were almost the exact words she had sent down to Nathan's
apartments countless times when a Sister had come to her with Nathan's
demands to see the Prelate. Tell Nathan that I have a whole palace to run
and I can't go running down there every time he bellows for me. If he has
had a prophecy, then write it down and I will look it over when I have the
time.
Until that moment, Ann had never truly realized how cruel her words had
been.
Nyda pulled the door shut behind her. Ann was alone in a prison she
knew she could not escape.
At least she was near the end of her life, and could not be held as a
prisoner for nearly her entire life, as she had held Nathan prisoner for
his.
Ann rushed to the little window. "Nyda!"
The Mord-Sith turned back from the second door, from beyond the shield
Ann could not cross. "Yes?"
"Tell Nathan ... tell Nathan that I'm sorry."
Nyda let out a brief laugh. "Oh, I think Nathan knows you're sorry."
Ann thrust her arm through the door, reaching toward the woman. "Nyda,
please. Tell him . .. tell Nathan that I love him."
Nyda stared at her a long moment before she pushed the outer door
closed.
Kahlan lifted her head. She gently laid a hand on Richard's chest as
she turned her ear toward the sound she'd heard off in the darkness. Beneath
her hand, Richard's chest rose and fell with his labored breathing, but,
even at that, she felt relief--he was still alive. As long as he was alive
she could fight to find a solution. She wouldn't give him up. They would get
to Nicci. Somehow, they would get to her.
A quick glance to the position of the quarter moon told her that she'd
been asleep less than an hour. Clouds, silvery in the moonlight, had
silently begun streaming in from the north. In the distant sky she saw, too,
the moonlit wings of the black-tipped races that always trailed them.
She hated those birds. The races had been following them ever since
Cara had touched the statue of Kahlan that Nicci said was a warning beacon.
Those dark wings were never far, like the shadow of death, always following,
always waiting.
Kahlan recalled all too well the sand in that hourglass statue
trickling out. Her time was running out. She had no actual indication of
what would happen when the time that sand had represented finally ran out--
but she could imagine well enough.
The place where they had set up camp, before a sharp rise of rock with
a stand of bristlecone pine and thorny brush to one side, wasn't as
protected or tenable a camp as any of them would have liked, but Cara had
confided that she was afraid that if they didn't stop, Richard wouldn't live
the night.
That whispered warning had set Kahlan's heart to pounding, brought cold
sweat to her brow, and swept her to the verge of panic.
She had known that the rough wagon ride, slow as it had been while they
made their way across open country in the dark, seemed to have made it more
difficult for Richard to breathe. Less than two hours after they had started
out, after Cara's warning, they'd been forced to stop. After they had
stopped, they were all relieved that Richard's breathing became more even,
and sounded a little less labored.
They needed to make it to roads so that traveling would be easier on
Richard, and so they could make better time. Maybe after he rested the
night, they could make swifter progress.
She had to fight constantly to tell herself that they would get him
there, that they had a chance, and that the journey's purpose wasn't merely
empty hope meant to forestall the truth.
The last time Kahlan had felt this helpless, felt this sense of
Richard's life slipping away, she'd at least had one solid chance available
to her to save him. She'd had no idea, at the time, that that one chance
taken would be the catalyst that would initiate a cascade of events that
would begin the disintegration of magic itself.
She was the one who had made the decision to take that chance, and she
was the one responsible for all that was now coming to pass. Had she known
what she now knew, she would have made the same decision--to save Richard's
life--but that made her no less liable for the consequences.
She was the Mother Confessor, and, as such, was responsible for
protecting the lives of those with magic, of creatures of magic. And,
instead, she might very well be the cause of their end.
Kahlan sprang to her feet, sword in hand, when she heard Cara's
whistled birdcall to alert them to her return. It was a birdcall Richard had
taught her.
Kahlan slid the shutter on the lantern open all the way to provide more
light. She saw Tom, hand resting on the silver-handled knife at his belt,
rise from the nearby rock where he'd been sitting as he watched over both
the camp and the man Kahlan had touched with her power. The man still lay on
the ground at Tom's feet where Kahlan had ordered him to stay.
"What is it?" Jennsen whispered as she appeared at Kahlan's side,
hastily rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"I'm not sure, yet. Cara signaled, so she must have someone with her."
Cara walked in out of the darkness, and, as Kahlan had suspected, she
was pushing a man ahead of her. Kahlan frowned, trying to recall where she'd
seen him before. She blinked, then, realizing it was the young man they had
come across a week or so back--Owen.
"I tried to get to you sooner!" Owen cried out when he saw Kahlan. "I
swear, I tried."
Holding him by the shoulder of his light coat, Cara marched the man
closer, then yanked him to a halt in front of Kahlan.
"What are you talking about?" Kahlan asked.
When Owen caught sight of Jennsen standing behind Kahlan's shoulder, he
paused with his mouth hanging open for an instant before he answered.
"I meant to get to you earlier, I swear," he said to Kahlan, sounding
on the verge of tears. "I went to your camp." He clutched his light coat
closed at his chest as he began to tremble. "I, I saw ... I saw all the ...
remains. Dear Creator, how could you be so brutal?"
Kahlan thought Owen looked like he might throw up. He covered his mouth
and closed his eyes as he shook.
"If you mean all those men," Kahlan said, "they tried to capture us, to
kill us. We didn't collect them from their rocking chairs beside their
hearths and bring them out into this wasteland where we slaughtered them.
They attacked us; we defended ourselves."
"But, dear Creator, how could you ..." Owen stood before her, unable to
control his shivering. He closed his eyes. "Nothing is real. Nothing is
real. Nothing is real." He repeated it over and over, as if it were an
incantation meant to protect him from evil.
Cara forcibly dragged Owen back a bit and sat him down on a shelf of
rock. Eyes closed meditatively, he mumbled "Nothing is real" to himself
continually while Cara took up a position to the left side of Kahlan.
"Tell us what you're doing here," Cara commanded in a low growl.
Although she didn't say it, the "or else" was clear enough.
"And be quick about it," Kahlan said. "We have enough trouble and we
don't need you added on top of it."
Owen opened his eyes. "I went to your camp to tell you about it, but...
all those bodies ..."
"We know about what happened back there. Now, tell us why you're here."
Kahlan was at the end of her patience. "I'm not going to ask you again."
"Lord Rahl," Owen wailed, tears bursting forth at last.
"Lord Rahl what," Kahlan demanded through gritted teeth.
"Lord Rahl has been poisoned," he blurted out as he wept.
Gooseflesh prickled up Kahlan's legs. "How can you possibly know such a
thing is true?"
Owen stood, clutching twisted wads of his coat at his chest. "I know,"
he cried, "because I'm the one who poisoned him."
Could it be? Could it be that it wasn't really the runaway power of the
gift killing Richard, but poison? Could it be that they had it all wrong?
Could it be that it was all caused by this man poisoning Richard?
Kahlan felt her sword's hilt slip from her fingers as she started for
the man.
He stood watching her come, like a fawn watching a mountain lion about
to leap.
Kahlan knew there was something strange about this man. Richard, too,
had thought there was something unsettling about him, something not quite
right.
Somehow, this quaking stranger had poisoned Richard.
Richard barely hung to life. He was suffering and in pain. This man had
been the cause of it all. Kahlan would know why, and she would know the
truth of it.
Kahlan closed the distance quickly. She would not risk his escape. She
would not risk his lies.
She would have his confession.
Her hand started coming up toward him. Her power was recovered-- she
could feel it there, in the core of her being, at the ready.
This man had tried to kill Richard. She intended to find out if there
was a way to save him. This man could tell her.
She committed herself to taking him.
It was not necessary for Kahlan to invoke her birthright, but merely to
withdraw her restraint of it. Her feelings about what this man had done
faded away; they no longer mattered in this. Only the truth would serve her
now. She was a being of raw commitment.
He had no chance. He was hers.
She saw him standing frozen, watching her come, saw his blue eyes
widen, saw the tears running down his cheeks. Kahlan felt the cold coil of
power straining for release, demanding to be freed. As her hand rose toward
this man who had harmed Richard, she wanted nothing so much as what she
would have.
He was hers.
Cara abruptly jumped in between them.
Kahlan's sight of the man was blocked by the Mord-Sith. Kahlan tried to
brush Cara aside, but she was ready and firmly held her ground. Cara seized
Kahlan by the shoulders and forced her back three paces.
"No. Mother Confessor, no."
Kahlan was still focused on Owen, even if she couldn't see him. "Get
out of my way."
"No. Stop."
"Move!" Kahlan tried to shove Cara aside, but the woman had her feet
spread and couldn't be budged. "Cara!"
"No. Listen to me."
"Cara, get out of--"
She shook Kahlan so hard that Kahlan thought her neck would snap.
"Listen to me!"
Kahlan panted in rage. "What."
"Wait until you hear what he says. He came here for a reason. When he
finishes, you can use your power if you want, or you can let me make him
scream until the moon covers its ears, but first we need to hear what he
says."
"I'll find out soon enough what he says, and I'll know the truth. When
I touch him he will confess every detail."
"And if Lord Rahl dies as a result? Lord Rahl's life hanging in the
balance. We must think of that first."
"I am. Why do you think I'm going to do this?"
Cara pulled Kahlan close to hear her whisper. "And what if using your
power on this man kills him for some reason we don't yet even know about.
Remember when we didn't know everything in the past? Remember Marlin Pickard
announcing he had come to assassinate Richard? It was too easy then, and
it's too easy this time.
"What if your touching this man is someone's design--a trick, with this
man sent as bait of some sort? What if they want you to do it for some
reason? What if you do what they intend you to do--then what? It won't be a
simple mistake that we can work to fix. If Lord Rahl dies we can't bring him
back."
Cara's fierce blue eyes were wet. Her powerful fingers dug into
Kah-lan's shoulders. "What can it hurt to hear him first, before you touch
him? You can then touch him, if you still think it's necessary--but hear him
first. Mother Confessor, as a sister of the Agiel, I'm asking you, please,
for the sake of Lord Rahl's life, wait."
More than anything, it was Cara's reluctance to use force that gave
Kahlan pause. If there was anyone who would be more than willing to use
physical force to protect Richard, it was Cara.
In the dim light of the lantern, Kahlan studied the emotion in Cara's
expression. Despite everything Cara said, Kahlan didn't know if she could
afford to take the chance, to hesitate.
"What if it's a stab in the dark?" Jennsen asked from behind.
Kahlan glanced back over her shoulder at Richard's sister, at the worry
on her face.
Kahlan had made a mistake before in not acting quickly enough, and it
resulted in Richard being captured and taken from her. Then it was his
freedom; this time it was his life at stake.
She knew that while hesitation had been a mistake in that instance,
that didn't mean that immediate action was always right.
She looked back into Cara's eyes. "All right. We'll hear what he has to
say." With a thumb, she brushed a tear from Cara's cheek, a tear of terror
for Richard, a tear of terror at the thought of losing him. "Thanks," Kahlan
whispered.
Cara nodded and released her. She turned and folded her arms, fixing
Owen in her glare.
"You had better not make me sorry for stopping her."
Owen peered about at all the faces watching him--Friedrich, Tom,
Jennsen, Cara, Kahlan, and even the man Kahlan had touched, lying on the
ground not far away.
"In the first place, how could you possibly have poisoned Richard?"
Kahlan asked.
Owen licked his lips, fearful of telling her, even though that was
apparently why he had returned. His gaze finally broke toward the ground.
"When I saw the dust rising from the wagon, and I knew that I was near,
I dumped out what water I had left, so it would appear I had none. Then,
when Lord Rahl found me, I asked for a drink. When he gave me his waterskin
so I could have a drink, I put poison in it, just before I handed it back. I
was relieved that you had showed up, too. It was my intention that I poison
both Lord Rahl and you, Mother Confessor, but you had your own water and
didn't take a drink when he offered it to you. But I guess it doesn't
matter. This will work just as well."
Kahlan couldn't make sense of such a confession. "So you intended to
kill us both, but you were only able to poison Richard."
"Kill... ?" Owen looked up in shock at the very idea. He shook his head
emphatically. "No, no, nothing like that. Mother Confessor, I tried to get
to you earlier, but those men went to your camp before I got there. I needed
to get the antidote to Lord Rahl."
"I see. You wanted to save him--after you'd poisoned him--but when you
got to our camp, we'd gone."
His eyes filled with tears again. "It was so awful. All the bodies--
the blood. I've never seen such brutal murder." He covered his mouth.
"It would have been murder--our murder," Kahlan said, "had we not
defended ourselves."
Owen seemed not to hear her. "And you were gone--you'd left. I didn't
know where you'd gone. It was hard to follow your wagon's trail in the dark,
but I had to. I had to run, to catch up with you. I was afraid the races
would get me, but I knew I had to reach you tonight. I couldn't wait. I was
afraid, but I had to come."
The whole story was nonsense to Kahlan.
"So you're like one of those people who starts a fire, calls out an
alarm, and then helps put it out--all so you can be a hero."
Startled, Owen shook his head. "No, no, nothing like that. Nothing like
that at all--I swear. I hated doing it. I did. I hated it."
"Then why did you poison him!"
Owen twisted his light coat in his fists as tears trickled down his
cheeks. "Mother Confessor, we have to give him the antidote, now, or he will
die. It's already so very late." He clasped his hands prayerfully and gazed
skyward. "Dear Creator, let it not be too late, please." He reached out for
Kahlan, as if to urgently beg her as well, to assure her of his sincerity,
but at the look on her face, drew back. "There's no more time, Mother
Confessor. I tried to get to you earlier--I swear. If you don't let him have
the remedy now, it will be the end of him. It will all be for
naught--everything, all if it, all for nothing!"
Kahlan didn't know if she dared trust in such an offer. It made no
sense to poison a man and then save him.
"What's the antidote?" she asked.
"Here." Owen hurriedly pulled a small vial from a pocket inside his
coat. "Here it is. Please, Mother Confessor." He held the square-sided vial
out toward her. "He must have this now. Please, hurry, or he will die."
"Or this will finish him," Kahlan said.
"If I wanted to finish him, I could have done so when I slipped the
poison into his waterskin. I could have used more of it, or I could simply
not have come with the antidote. I'm not a killer, I swear-- that's why I
had to come in the first place."
Owen wasn't making a whole lot of sense. Kahlan wasn't confident in
such an offer. It was Richard's life that would be forfeit if she chose
wrong.
"I say we give Richard Owen's antidote," Jennsen whispered.
"A stab in the dark?" Kahlan asked.
"You said that there were times when there is no choice but to act
immediately, but even then it must be with your best judgment, using all
your experience and everything you do know. Earlier, in the wagon, I heard
Cara tell you that she didn't know if Richard would live the night. Owen
says he has an antidote. I think this is one of those times we must act."
"If it means anything," Tom offered in a confidential tone, "I'd have
to agree. I don't see as there really is any choice. But if you have an
alternative that might save Lord Rahl, I think now would be the time to add
it to the stew."
Kahlan didn't have any alternative, except getting to Nicci, and that
was looking more and more like no more than empty hope.
"Mother Confessor," Friedrich offered in a hushed tone, "I agree as
well. I think you should know that if you let him have the remedy, we all
were in agreement that it was the best choice to be made."
If the antidote killed Richard, they wouldn't blame her. That was what
he was saying.
Jennsen stepped toward Owen, pulling Betty along with her. "If you're
lying about this being an antidote, you will have to answer to me, and to
Cara, and then to the Mother Confessor--if there's even anything left of you
by then. You do understand that, don't you?"
Owen shrank from her, his head turned away, as he nodded vigorously,
apparently fearing to look up at her, or at Betty. Kahlan thought that he
looked more afraid of Jennsen than of any of the rest of them.
Cara leaned toward Kahlan and whispered. "He has to have an antidote.
What purpose would it be to place himself in danger of all we'll do to him
if he's lying? Why even come back here, if he only wanted to poison Lord
Rahl? He had already poisoned him and gotten away. Mother Confessor, I say
that we give Lord Rahl the antidote, and we do it quickly."
"Then why poison him in the first place?" Kahlan whispered back. "If
you intend to give a man the antidote, then why poison him?"
Cara let out a frustrated sigh. "I don't know. But right now, if Lord
Rahl dies ..."
Cara's words trailed off at the unthinkable.
Kahlan looked over at Richard lying unconscious. She went weak at the
thought of him never waking. How could she live in a world without Richard?
"How much do we give him?" she asked Owen.
Owen rushed forward, past Jennsen. "All of it. Make him drink it all
down." He pressed the small, square-sided bottle into Kahlan's hands.
"Hurry. Please hurry."
"You've hurt him," Kahlan said with unrestrained menace. "Your poison
hurt him. He's been coughing up blood, and he passed out from the pain. If
you think I'll ever forget that and be pleased with you for now returning to
save his life, you're wrong."
Owen nervously licked his lips. "But I tried to get to you. I was
bringing you the antidote so that wouldn't happen. I never intended him such
pain. I tried to get to you--but you slaughtered all those men."
"So, it's our fault, then?"
Owen smiled just a bit as he nodded, a small smile of satisfaction that
she'd finally seen the light and at last understood that it wasn't his fault
at all, but their fault.
While Jennsen watched Owen, keeping him back out of the way, Tom
watched the man Kahlan had touched, and Friedrich watched Betty, Kahlan and
Cara knelt and lifted Richard so they could try to get him to drink the
antidote. Cara propped his back against her thigh while Kahlan cradled his
head in her arm.
She pulled the stopper with her teeth and spit out the cork. Careful
not to spill and waste any of the antidote, she put the bottle to his lips
and tipped it up. She watched it wet his lips. She tilted his head back
more, so that his mouth would fall open a bit, and tipped the bottle some
more. Carefully, she let some of the clear liquid dribble into his mouth.
Kahlan didn't know if what was in the bottle really was an antidote. It
was colorless and looked to her just like water. As Richard smacked his lips
a little, swallowing what she had poured in his mouth, Kahlan smelled the
bottle. The liquid had the slight aroma of cinnamon.
She dribbled more of it into Richard's mouth. He coughed, but then
swallowed. Cara used a finger to swipe up a drop that ran down his chin and
return it to his mouth.
Kahlan, her heart pounding with worry, poured the rest of the liquid
past his lips. Holding the empty bottle between her thumb and first finger,
she used the palm of her hand to push Richard's jaw up, forcing his head
back, forcing him to swallow.
She sighed with relief when he swallowed several times, taking all the
cure. At least she'd been able to get him to swallow it.
Carefully, Kahlan and Cara laid Richard back down. As Cara stood, Owen
rushed forward.
"Did you give him all of it? Did he drink it all?"
Cara's Agiel spun into her fist. As Owen, in his exuberance to get to
Richard, charged forward, Cara rammed her Agiel into Owen's shoulder.
Owen tottered back a step. "I'm sorry." He rubbed his shoulder where
Cara had jabbed her Agiel into him. "I only wanted to see how he is. I don't
mean any harm. I want him to be well, I swear."
Kahlan stared in astonishment. Cara glanced down at her Agiel, then at
Owen.
Her Agiel hadn't worked on him. He wasn't affected by magic.
Even Jennsen was staring at Owen. He was just like her--a pillar of
Creation, born pristinely ungifted and unaffected by magic. While Jennsen
understood what that meant, it didn't seem that Owen did. He had no idea
that Cara had done anything more than poke him good and hard to get him to
stand back.
Her Agiel should have dropped him to his knees.
"Richard drank all the antidote. Now it must do its work. In the
meantime, I think we had better get some sleep." Kahlan gestured with a tilt
of her head. "See to the watches, would you Cara? I'll stay with Richard."
Cara nodded. She gave Tom a look, which he understood.
"Owen," Tom said, "why don't you come over by me and spend the night
over here, with this fellow."
Owen blanched at the look on the face of the big D'Haran, and
understood that he wasn't being offered a choice. "Yes, all right." He
turned back to Kahlan. "I'll pray that he got the antidote in time. I'll
pray for him."
"Pray for yourself," she said.
When everyone had gone, Kahlan lay down beside Richard. Now that she
was alone with him, tears of worry finally began to seep out. Richard was
shivering with cold, even though it was a warm night. She drew the blanket
back up around him and then put her hand on his shoulder as she cuddled
close, not knowing if when the new day came he would still be with her.
Richard opened his eyes, only to squint at the light, even though it
was far from sunny. By the layered streaks of violet tinting the iron gray
sky, it appeared to be just dawn. A heavy overcast hung low overhead. Or it
could be sunset--he wasn't really sure. He felt strangely disoriented.
The dull throbbing in his head ached back down through his neck. His
chest burned with every breath he drew. His throat was raw. It hurt to
swallow.
The heavy pain, though, the pain that had squeezed so hard it had taken
his breath and had made the world go black, seemed to have ebbed. The
bone-chilling grip of cold had lifted, too.
Richard felt as if he had lost contact with the world for a time-- how
long a time he didn't know. It seemed like it had been an eternity, as if
the world of life was a distant memory from his past. He also felt as if he
had come close to never waking again. It brought a flash of sweat to his
brow to feel that he had been close to losing his life, to realize that he
might never have awakened.
The surroundings were different from those he remembered. Close by, a
wall of straw-colored rock with sharp fractured edges rose nearly straight
up. To the side he saw a stand of twisted bristlecone pine. Pale, bare wood
stood out in naked relief where sections of dark bark had peeled open. The
imposing mountains loomed closer than he remembered, and there were more
trees on the slopes of the nearby hills.
Jennsen lay curled up in a blanket beside Betty, her back against the
rear wheel of the wagon. Tom was asleep not too far away right beside his
draft horses. Friedrich sat on a rock standing watch. Richard couldn't make
sense of the two men who lay at Friedrich's feet. Richard thought one of
them must be the man Kahlan had touched with her power. The other one,
though, he wasn't sure of, although Richard thought there was something
familiar about him.
Kahlan was sound asleep up against him. His sword lay on his other
side, close by his hand. On the other side of Kahlan lay her sword,
sheathed, but at the ready.
All the Seekers who had used the Sword of Truth before Richard, the
good and the evil, had left within the sword's magic the essence of their
skill. By mastering the sword as the true Seeker for whom the makers of the
sword intended its power, Richard had learned to tap that ability and make
it his own, to draw on all the skill and knowledge of those before him. He
had become a master of the blade, in more ways than one, and part of that
had come from the blade itself.
Kahlan had been taught to use a sword by her father, King Wyborn
Amnell, once king of Galea before Kahlan's mother had taken him for her
mate. Richard had completed Kahlan's training, teaching her how to use a
sword in ways she had never been shown, ways that used her size and speed to
her best advantage, rather than fighting like the enemy and depending on
strength.
Despite his pounding head, and the pain when he drew a breath, the warm
feel of Kahlan against his side brought him a smile. She looked so
beautiful, even with her hair all in a tangle. She made his heart ache with
longing. He had always loved her long beautiful hair. He loved to watch her
sleep almost as much as he loved to gaze into her arresting green eyes. He
loved to make her hair a tangled mess.
He remembered, back when he had first met her, watching her sleep on
the floor of Adie's home, watching her slow heartbeat in the vein in her
neck. He remembered, as he'd watched, being struck by the life in her. She
was just so alive, so passionately filled with life. He couldn't stop
smiling as he looked at her.
Gently, he bent and kissed the top of her head. She stirred, nuzzling
up tighter to him.
Suddenly, she jerked upright, sitting on a hip as she stared wide-eyed
at him.
"Richard!"
She threw herself down beside him, her head on his shoulder, her arm
across his chest. She clutched him for dear life. A single gasp of a sob
that terrified him with its forlorn misery escaped her throat.
"I'm all right," he soothed as he smoothed her hair.
She pushed herself up again, slower, gazing at him as if she hadn't
seen him in an eternity. Her special smile, the one she gave only him,
spread incandescent across her face.
"Richard..." She seemed only able to stare at him and smile.
Richard, still lying back trying to let his head clear, lifted an arm
just enough to point. "Who is that?"
Kahlan looked back over her shoulder. She turned back and took up
Richard's hand.
"Remember that fellow a week or so back? Owen? That's him."
"I thought I recognized him."
"Lord Rahl!" Cara dropped to the ground on the side of him opposite
Kahlan. "Lord Rahl..."
She, too, seemed to have trouble finding words. Instead, she took up
his free hand. That, in itself, said a world to him.
Richard took the hand back, kissed his first two fingers and touched
the fingers to her cheek.
"Thanks for watching out for everyone."
Jennsen hobbled over, the blanket still tangled around her legs.
"Richard! The antidote worked! It worked, dear spirits, it worked!"
Richard rose up onto an elbow. "Antidote?" He frowned at the three
women around him. "Antidote to what?"
"You were poisoned," Kahlan told him. She aimed a thumb back over her
shoulder. "Owen. When he came to us the first time, you gave him a drink. In
thanks, he put poison in your waterskin. He intended to poison me with it,
too, but only you drank it."
Richard's glare settled on the men at Friedrich's feet, watching
them.He nodded his confirmation that it was true, as if he should be
commended for it.
"One of those little mistakes," Jennsen said.
Richard puzzled at her. "What?"
"You said that even you made mistakes, and even a little one could
cause big trouble. Don't you remember? Cara said you were always making
mistakes, especially simple ones, and that's why you need her around."
Jennsen flashed him a teasing smile. "I guess she was right."
Richard didn't correct the story, but said, as he stood, "It just goes
to show how you can be taken by surprise by something as simple as that
fellow over there."
Kahlan was watching Owen. "I have a suspicion he isn't so simple."
Cara put her arm out for Richard to grab hold of in order to steady
himself.
"Cara," he said as he had to sit down on a nearby crate from the wagon,
"bring him over here, would you?"
"Gladly," she said as she started across their camp. "Don't forget to
tell him about Owen," Cara said to Kahlan.
"Tell me what?"
Kahlan leaned close as she watched Cara haul Owen to his feet. "Owen is
pristinely ungifted--like Jennsen."
Richard raked his hair back, trying to make sense of it. "Are you
saying that he's also my half brother?"
Kahlan shrugged. "We don't know that; we know only that he's pristinely
ungifted." A wrinkle of puzzlement tightened on her brow. "By the way, back
at the camp where those men attacked us, you were about to tell me something
important you figured out when we were questioning the man that I touched,
but you never got the chance."
"Yes"--Richard squinted, trying to recall what the man had told
them--"it was about the one he said gave the orders sending him to capture
us: Nicholas ... Nicholas something."
"The Slide," Kahlan reminded him. "Nicholas the Slide."
"Right. Nicholas told him where to find us--at the eastern edge of the
wasteland, heading north. How could he know?"
Kahlan mulled over the question. "Come to think of it, how could he
know? We've seen no one, at least no one we were aware of, who could have
reported where we were. Even if someone had seen us, by the time they
reported our position and Nicholas sent the men, we would have been far from
here. Unless Nicholas is close."
"The races," Richard said. "It has to be that he's the one watching us
through the races. We've seen no one else. That's the only way anyone could
have known where we were. This Nicholas the Slide had to have seen us, to
have seen where we were, through those birds that have been shadowing us.
That's how he was able to give our location along with the orders."
Richard rose as the man approached.
"Lord Rahl," Owen said, arms spread in a gesture of relief as he
scurried forward, Cara holding a fistful of his coat at his shoulder to keep
him reined in. "I'm so relieved you're better. I never meant for the poison
to hurt you as it did--and it never would have, had you had the antidote
sooner. I tried to get to you sooner--I meant to--I swear I did, but all
those men you slaughtered... it wasn't my fault." He added a small smile to
the pleading expression he gave Kahlan. "The Mother Confessor knows, she
understands."
Kahlan folded her arms as she looked up at Richard from under her
frown. "It's our fault, you see, that Owen didn't make it to us sooner with
the antidote to the poison. Owen got to our last camp, intending to hand
over the antidote to cure you, only to find that we had murdered all those
men and then up and left. So, it's not his fault--his intentions were good
and he tried; we spoiled his effort. Very inconsiderate of us."
Richard stared, not sure if Kahlan was giving him a sarcastic summation
of what Owen had told her, or an accurate portrayal of Owen's excuse, or if
his head still wasn't clear.
Richard's mood turned as dark as the thick overcast.
"You poisoned me," he said to Owen, wanting to be sure he had the man's
story straight, "and then you brought an antidote to where we were camped,
but when you got to that camp, you came across the men who had attacked us
and you found we had gone."
"Yes." His cheer that Richard had it right abruptly faded. "Such
savagery from the unenlightened is to be expected, of course." Owen's blue
eyes filled with tears. "But still, it was so ..." He hugged himself and
closed his eyes as he rocked his weight from side to side, from one foot to
the other. "Nothing is real. Nothing is real. Nothing is real."
Richard seized the man's shirt at his throat and yanked him closer.
"What do you mean, nothing is real?"
Owen paled before Richard's glare. "Nothing is real. We can't know if
what we see, if anything, is real or not. How could we?"
"If you see it, then how can you possibly think it isn't real?"
"Because our senses all the time distort the truth of reality and
deceive us. Our senses only delude us into the illusion of certainty. We
can't see at night--our sight tells us that the night is empty--but an owl
can snatch up a mouse that with our eyes we couldn't sense was there. Our
reality says the mouse didn't exist--yet we know it must, in spite of what
our vision tells us--that another reality exists outside our experience. Our
sight, rather than revealing truth, hides the truth from us--worse, it gives
us a false idea of reality.
"Our senses deceived us. Dogs can smell a world of things we can't,
because our senses are so limited. How can a dog track something we can't
smell, if our senses tell us what is real and what isn't. Our understanding
of reality, rather than being enhanced by, is instead limited by, our flawed
senses.
"Our bias causes us to mistakenly think we know what is
unknowable--don't you see? We aren't equipped with adequate senses to know
the true nature of reality, what is real and what isn't. We only know a tiny
sampling of the world around us. There is a whole world hidden from us, a
whole world of mysteries we don't see--but it's there just the same, whether
we see it or not, whether we have the wisdom to admit our inadequacies to
the task of knowing reality, or not. What we think we know is actually
unknowable. Nothing is real."
Richard leaned down. "You saw those bodies because they were real."
"What we see is only an apparent reality, mere appearances, a
self-imposed illusion, all based on our flawed perception. Nothing is real."
"You didn't like what you saw, so you choose, instead, to say it isn't
real?"
"I can't say what's real. Neither can you. To say otherwise is
unenlightened arrogance. A truly enlightened man admits his woeful
ineffectiveness when confronting his existence."
Richard pulled Owen closer. "Such whimsy can only bring you to a life
of misery and quaking fear, a life wasted and never really lived. You had
better start using your mind for its true purpose of knowing the world
around you, instead of abandoning it to faith in irrational notions. With
me, you will confine yourself to the facts of the world we live in, not
fanciful daydreams as concocted by others."
Jennsen tugged on Richard's sleeve, pulling him back to hear her as she
whispered. "Richard, what if Owen is right--not necessarily about the
bodies, but about the general idea?"
"You mean you think his conclusions are all wrong, and yet, somehow,
the convoluted idea behind them must be right."
"Well, no--but what if what he says really is true? After all, look at
you and me. Remember the conversation we had a while back, the one where you
were explaining how I was born without eyes to see"-- she glanced briefly at
Owen and apparently abbreviated what she had intended to say--"certain
things. Remember that you said that, for me, such things don't exist? That
reality is different for me? That my reality is different than yours?"
"You're getting what I said wrong, Jennsen. When most people get into a
patch of poison ivy, they blister and itch. Some rare people don't. That
doesn't mean the poison ivy doesn't exist, or, more to the point, that its
existence depends on whether or not we think it's there."
Jennsen pulled him even closer. "Are you so sure? Richard, you don't
know what it's like to be different from everyone else, to not see and feel
what they do. You say there's magic, but I can't see it, or feel it. It
doesn't touch me. Am I to believe you on faith, when my senses say it
doesn't exist? Maybe because of that I can understand a little better what
Owen means. Maybe he doesn't have it all wrong. It makes a person wonder
what's real and what's not, and if, like he says, it's only your own point
of view."
"The information our senses give us must be taken in context. If I
close my eyes the sun doesn't stop shining. When I go to sleep I'm
consciously unaware of anything; that doesn't mean that the world ceases to
exist. You have to use the information from your senses in context along
with what you've learned to be true about the nature of things. Things don't
change because of the way we think about them. What is, is."
"But, like he says, if we don't experience something with our own
senses, then how can we know it's real?"
Richard folded his arms. "I can't get pregnant. So would you argue that
for me women don't exist."
Jennsen backed away, looking a little sheepish. "I guess not."
"Now," Richard said, turning back to Owen, "you poisoned me-- you admit
that much." He tapped his fist against his own chest. "It hurts in here;
that's real. You caused it.
"I want to know why, and I want to know why you brought the antidote.
I'm not interested in what you think of the camp where the men who attacked
us lay dead. Confine yourself to the matter at hand. You brought the
antidote for the poison you gave me. That can't be the end of it. What's the
rest?"
"Well," Owen stammered, "I didn't want you to die, that's why I saved
you."
"Stop telling me your feelings about what you did and tell me instead
what you did and why. Why poison me, and why then save me? I want the answer
to that, and I want the truth."
Owen glanced around at the grim faces watching him. He took a breath as
if to gather his composure.
"I needed your help. I had to convince you to help me. I asked, before,
for your help and you refused, even though my people have great need. I
begged. I told you how important it was for them to have your help, but you
still said no."
"I have my own problems I must deal with," Richard said. "I'm sorry the
Order invaded your homeland--I know how terrible that is-- but I told you,
I'm trying to bring them down and our doing so will only help you and your
people in your effort to rid yourselves of them. You aren't the only one who
has had their home invaded by those brutes. We have men of the Order
murdering our loved ones as well."
"You must help us, first," Owen insisted. "You and those like you, the
unenlightened ones, must free my people. We can't do it ourselves--we are
not savages. I heard what you all had to say about eating meat. Such talk
made me ill. Our people are not like that--we can't be, because we are
enlightened. I saw how you murdered all those men back there. I need you to
do that to the Order."
"I thought that wasn't real?"
Owen ignored the question. "You must give my people freedom."
"I already told you, I can't!"
"Now, you must." He looked at Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and Friedrich. His
gaze settled on Kahlan. "You must see to it that Lord Rahl does this--or he
will die. I have poisoned him."
Kahlan seized Owen's shirt. "You brought him the antidote to the
poison."
Owen nodded. "That first night, when I told you all of my great need, I
had just given him the poison." His gaze returned to Richard. "You had just
drunk it, within hours. Had you agreed to give my people the freedom they
need, I would have given you the antidote then, and you would be free of the
poison. It would have cured you.
"But you refused to come with me, to help those who cannot help
themselves, as is your duty to those in need. You sent me away. So, I did
not offer you the antidote. In the time since, the poison has worked its way
through your body. Had you not been selfish, you would have been cured back
then.
"Instead, the poison is now established in you, doing its work. Since
it was so long since you drank the poison, the antidote I had with me was no
longer enough to cure you, only to make you better for a while."
"And what will cure me?" Richard asked.
"You will have to have more of the antidote to rid you of the rest of
the poison."
"And I don't suppose you have any more."
Owen shook his head. "You must give my people freedom. Only then, will
you be able to get more of the antidote."
Richard wanted to shake the answers out of the man. Instead, he took a
breath, trying to stay calm so that he could understand the truth of what
Owen had done and then think of the solution.
"Why only then?" he asked.
"Because," Owen said, "the antidote is in the place taken by the
Imperial Order. You must rid us of the invaders if you are to be able to get
to the antidote. If you want to live, you must give us our freedom. If you
don't, you will die."
Kahlan reached in to seize Owen by the throat. She wanted to strangle
him, to choke him, to make him feel the desperate, panicked need of breath
that Richard had endured, to make him suffer, to show him what it was like.
Cara went for Owen as well, apparently having the same thought as Kahlan.
Richard thrust his arm out, holding them both back.
Holding Owen's shirt in his other fist, Richard shook the man. "And how
long do I have until I get sick again? How long do I have to live before
your poison kills me?"
Owen's confused gaze flitted from one angry face to another. "But if
you do as I ask, as is your duty, you will be fine. I promise. You saw that
I brought you the antidote. I don't wish to harm you. That is not my
intent--I swear."
Kahlan could only think of Richard in crushing pain, unable to breathe.
It had been terrifying. She couldn't think of anything else but him going
through it again, only this time never to wake.
"How long?" Richard repeated.
"But if you only--"
"How long!"
Owen licked his lips. "Not a month. Close to it, but not a month, I
believe."
Kahlan tried to push Richard away. "Let me have him. I'll find out--"
"No." Cara pulled Kahlan back. "Mother Confessor," she whispered, "let
Lord Rahl do as he must. You don't know what your touch would do to one such
as he."
"It might do nothing," Kahlan insisted, "but it might still work, and
then we can find out everything."
Cara restrained her with an arm around her waist that Kahlan could not
pry off. "And if only the Subtractive side works and it kills him?"
Kahlan stopped struggling as she frowned at Cara. "And since when have
you taken up the study of magic?"
"Since it might harm Lord Rahl." Cara pulled Kahlan back farther away
from Richard. "I have a mind, too, you know. I can think things through. Are
you using your head? Where is this city? Where is the antidote within the
city? What will you do if using your power kills this man and you are the
one who condemns Lord Rahl to death when you could have had the information
we need had you not touched him.
"If you want, I will break his arms. I will make him bleed. I will make
him scream in agony. But I will not kill him; I will keep him alive so that
he can give us the information we need to rid Lord Rahl of this death
sentence.
"Ask yourself, do you really want to do this because you believe it
will gain you the answers we need, or because you want to lash out, to
strike out at him? Lord Rahl's life may hang on you being truthful with
yourself."
Kahlan panted from the effort of the struggle, but more from her rage.
She wanted to lash out, to strike back, just as Cara said--to do whatever
she could to save Richard and to punish his attacker.
"I've had it with this game," Kahlan said. "I want to hear the story--
the whole story."
"So do I," Richard said. He lifted the man by his shirt and slammed him
down atop the crate. "All right, Owen, no more excuses for why you did this
or that. Start at the beginning and tell us what happened, and what you and
your people did about it."
Owen sat trembling like a leaf. Jennsen urged Richard back.
"You're frightening him," she whispered to Richard. "Give him some room
or he will never be able to get it out."
Richard took a purging breath as he acknowledged Jennsen's words with a
hand on her shoulder. He walked off a few paces, standing with his hands
clasped behind his back as he stared off in the direction of the sunrise,
toward the mountains Kahlan had so often seen him studying. It had been on
the other side of the range of the smaller, closer mountains, tight in the
shadows of those massive peaks thrusting up through the iron gray clouds,
where they had found the warning beacon and first encountered the
black-tipped races.
The clouds that capped the sky all the way to the wall of those distant
peaks hung heavy and dark. For the first time since Kahlan could remember,
it looked like a storm might be upon them. The expectant smell of rain
quickened the air.
"Where are you from?" Richard asked in a calm voice.
Owen cleared his throat as he straightened his shirt and light coat, as
if rearranging his dignity. He remained seated atop the crate.
"I lived in a place of enlightenment, in a civilization of advanced
culture ... a great empire."
"Where is this noble empire?" Richard asked, still staring off into the
distance.
Owen stretched his neck up, looking east. He pointed at the far wall of
towering peaks where Richard was looking.
"There. Do you see that notch in the high mountains? I lived past
there, in the empire beyond those mountains."
Kahlan remembered asking Richard if he thought they could make it over
those mountains. Richard had been doubtful about it.
He looked back over his shoulder. "What's the name of this empire?"
"Bandakar," Owen said in a reverent murmur. He smoothed his blond hair
to the side, as if to make himself a respectable representative of his
homeland. "I was a citizen of Bandakar, of the Bandakaran Empire."
Richard had turned and was staring at Owen in a most peculiar manner.
"Bandakar. Do you know what that name, Bandakar, means?"
Owen nodded. "Yes. Bandakar is an ancient word from a time long
forgotten. It means 'the chosen'--as in, the chosen empire."
Richard seemed to have lost a little of his color. When his eyes met
Kahlan's, she could see that he knew very well what the word meant, and Owen
had it wrong.
Richard seemed to suddenly remember himself. He rubbed his brow in
thought. "Do you--do any of your people--know the language that this ancient
word, bandakar, is from?"
Owen gestured dismissively. "We don't know of the language; it's long
forgotten. Only the meaning of this word has been passed down, because it is
so important to our people to hold on to the heritage of its meaning: chosen
empire. We are the chosen people."
Richard's demeanor had changed. His anger seemed to have faded away. He
stepped closer to Owen and spoke softly.
"The Bandakaran Empire--why isn't it known? Why does no one know of
your people?"
Owen looked away, toward the east, seeing his distant homeland through
wet eyes. "It is said that the ancient ones, the ones who gave us this name,
wanted to protect us--because we are a special people. They took us to a
place where no one could go, because of the mountains all around. Such
mountains as only the Creator could impose to close off the land beyond, so
that we are protected."
"Except that one place"--Richard gestured east--"that notch in the
mountain range, that pass."
"Yes," Owen admitted, still staring off toward his homeland. "That was
how we entered the land beyond, our land, but others could enter there as
well; it was the one place where we were vulnerable. You see, we are an
enlightened people who have risen above violence, but the world is still
full of savage races. So, those ancient people, who wanted our advanced
culture to survive, to thrive without the brutality of the rest of the world
.. . they sealed the pass."
"And your people have been isolated for all this time--for thousands of
years."
"Yes. We have a perfect land, a place of an advanced culture that is
undisturbed by the violence of the people out here."
"How was the pass, the notch in the mountains, how was it sealed?"
Owen looked at Richard, somewhat startled by the question. He thought
it over a moment. "Well. . . the pass was sealed. It was a place that no one
could enter."
"Because they would die if they entered this boundary."
With an icy wave of understanding, Kahlan suddenly understood what
composed the seal to this empire.
"Well, yes," Owen stammered. "But it had to be that way to keep
outsiders from invading our empire. We reject violence unconditionally. It's
unenlightened behavior. Violence only invites ever more violence, spiraling
into a cycle of violence with no end." He fidgeted with the worry of such a
trap catching them up in the allure of its wicked spell. "We are an advanced
race, above the violence of our ancestors. We have grown beyond. But without
the boundary that seals that pass and until the rest of the world rejects
violence as we have, our people could be the prey of unenlightened savages."
"And now, that seal is broken."
Owen stared at the ground, swallowing before he spoke. "Yes."
"How long ago did the boundary fail?"
"We aren't sure. It is a dangerous place. No one lives near it, so we
can't be positive, but we believe it was close to two years ago."
Kahlan felt the dizzying burden of confirmation of her fears.
When Owen looked up, he was a picture of misery. "Our empire is now
naked to unenlightened savages."
"Sometime after the boundary came down, the Imperial Order came in
through the pass."
"Yes."
"The land beyond those snowcapped mountains, the Empire of Ban-dakar,
is where the black-tipped races are from, isn't it?" Richard said.
Owen looked up, surprised that Richard knew this. "Yes. Those awful
creatures, innocent though they are of malice, prey on the people of my
homeland. We must stay indoors at night, when they hunt. Even so, people,
especially children, are sometimes surprised and caught by those fearsome
creatures--"
"Why don't you kill them?" Cara asked, indignantly. "Fight them off?
Shoot them with arrows? Dear spirits, why don't you bash their heads in with
a rock if you have to?"
Owen looked shocked by the very suggestion. "I told you, we are above
violence. It would be even more wrong to commit violence on such innocent
creatures. It is our duty to preserve them, since it is we who entered into
their domain. We are the ones who bear the guilt because we entice them into
such behavior which is only natural to them. We preserve virtue only by
embracing every aspect of the world without the prejudice of our flawed
human views."
Richard gave Cara a stealthy gesture to be quiet. "Was everyone in the
empire peaceful?" he asked, pulling Owen's attention away from Cara.
"Yes."
"Weren't there occasionally those who... I don't know, misbehaved?
Children, for example. Where I come from, children can sometimes become
rowdy. Children where you come from must sometimes become rowdy, too."
Owen shrugged a bit with one shoulder. "Well, yes, I guess so. There
were times when children misbehave and become unruly."
"And what do you do with such children?"
Owen cleared his throat, plainly uncomfortable. "Well, they are... put
out of their home for a time."
"Put out of their home for a time," Richard repeated. He lifted his
arms in a questioning shrug. "The children I know will usually be happy to
be put outside. They simply go play."
Owen shook his head emphatically at the serious nature of the matter.
"We are different. From the time we are born, we are together with others.
We are all very close. We depend on one another. We cherish one another. We
spend all our waking hours with others. We cook and wash and work together.
We sleep in a sleeping house, together. Ours is an enlightened life of human
contact, human closeness. There is no higher value than being together."
"So," Richard asked, feigning a puzzled look, "when one of you-- a
child--is put out, that is a cause of unhappiness?"
Owen swallowed as a tear ran down his cheek. "There could be nothing
worse. To be put out, to be closed off from others, is the worst horror we
can endure. To be forced out into the cold cruelty of the world is a
nightmare."
Just talking about such a punishment, thinking about it, was making
Owen start to tremble.
"And that's when, sometimes, the races get such children," Richard said
in a compassionate tone. "When they're alone and vulnerable."
With the back of his hand Owen wiped the tear from his cheek. "When a
child must be put out to be punished, we take all possible precautions. We
never put them out at night because that is when the races usually hunt.
Children are put out for punishment only in the day. But when we are away
from others, we are vulnerable to all the terrors and cruelties of the
world. To be alone is a nightmare.
"We would do anything to avoid such punishment. Any child who
misbehaves and is put out for a while will not likely misbehave again
anytime soon. There is no greater joy than to finally be welcomed back in
with our friends and family."
"So, for your people, banishment is the greatest punishment."
Owen stared into the distance. "Of course."
"Where I come from, we all got along pretty well, too. We enjoyed each
other's company and had great fun when many people would gather. We valued
our times together. When we're away for a time, we inquire about all the
people we know and haven't seen in a while."
Owen smiled expectantly. "Then you understand."
Richard nodded, returning the smile. "But occasionally there will be
someone who won't behave, even when they're an adult. We try everything we
can, but, sometimes, someone does something wrong--something they know is
wrong. They might lie or steal. Even worse, at times someone will
deliberately hurt another person--beat someone when robbing them, or rape a
woman, or even murder someone."
Owen wouldn't look up at Richard. He stared at the ground.
As he spoke, Richard paced slowly before the man. "When someone does
something like that where you come from, Owen, what do your people do? How
do an enlightened people handle such horrible crimes some of your people
commit against others?"
"We attack the root cause of such behavior from the beginning," Owen
was quick to answer. "We share all we have to make sure that everyone has
what they need so that they don't have to steal. People steal because they
feel the hurt of others acting superior. We show these people that we are no
better than they and so they need not harbor such fears of others. We teach
them to be enlightened and reject all such behavior."
Richard shrugged nonchalantly. Kahlan would have thought that he would
be ready to strangle the answers out of Owen, but, instead, he was behaving
in a calm, understanding manner. She had seen him act this way before. He
was the Seeker of Truth, rightfully named by the First Wizard himself.
Richard was doing what Seekers did: find the truth. Sometimes he used his
sword, sometimes words.
Even though this was the way Richard often disarmed people when he
questioned them, in this case it struck Kahlan that such a manner was
precisely what Owen would be most accustomed to, most comfortable with. This
gentle manner was pulling answers from the man and filling in a lot of
information Kahlan had never thought of trying to get.
She had already learned that she was the cause of what had befallen
these people.
"We both know, Owen, that, try as we might, such efforts to change
people's ways don't always work. Some people won't change. There are times
when people do evil things. Even among civilized people, there are some who
will not behave in a civil manner despite all your best efforts. What's
worse is that, if allowed to continue, these few jeopardize the whole
community.
"After all, if you have a rapist among you, you can't allow him to
continue to prey on women. If a man committed murder, you couldn't allow
such a man to threaten the empire with his ways, now could you? An advanced
culture, especially, can't be faulted for wanting to stop such dangers to
enlightened people.
"But you've shunned all forms of violence, so you can hardly punish
such a man physically--you couldn't put a murderer to death--not if you've
truly rejected violence unconditionally. What do you do with such men? How
does an enlightened people handle grave problems, such as murder?"
Owen was sweating. It seemed not to have occurred to him to deny the
existence of murderers--Richard had already led him past that, had already
established the existence of such men. Before Owen could think to object,
Richard was already beyond, to the next step.
"Well," Owen said, swallowing, "as you say, we are an enlightened
people. If someone does something to harm another, they are given ... a
denunciation."
"A denunciation. You mean, you condemn their actions, but not the man.
You give him a second chance."
"Yes, that's right." Owen wiped sweat from his brow as he glanced up at
Richard. "We work very hard to reform people who make such mistakes and are
given a denunciation. We recognize that their actions are a cry for help, so
we counsel them in the ways of enlightenment in order to help them to see
that they are hurting all our people when they hurt one, and that since they
are one of our beloved people, they are only hurting themselves when they
hurt another. We show such people compassion and understanding."
Kahlan caught Cara's arm, and with a stern look convinced her to remain
silent.
Richard paced slowly before Owen, nodding as if he thought that sounded
reasonable. "I understand. You put a great deal of effort into making them
see that they can never do such a thing again."
Owen nodded, relieved that Richard understood.
"But then there are times when one of those who has received a
denunciation, and has been counseled to the very best of your ability, goes
out and does the same crime again--or one even worse.
"It's clear, then, that he refuses to be reformed and that he's a
threat to public order, safety, and confidence. Left to his own devises,
such a person, by himself, will bring the very thing you unconditionally
reject--violence--to stalk among your people and win others to his ways."
A light mist had begun to fall. Owen sat on the crate, trembling,
frightened, alone. Only a short time ago he had been reluctant to answer
even the most basic question in a meaningful way; now Richard had him
speaking openly.
Friedrich stroked the jaw of one of the horses as he quietly watched.
Jennsen sat on a rock, Betty lying at her feet. Tom stood behind Jenn-sen, a
hand resting gently on her shoulder, but keeping an eye on the man Kahlan
had touched with her power. That man sat off to the side, listening
dispassionately as he waited to be commanded. Cara stood beside Kahlan, ever
watchful for trouble, but obviously caught up in the unfolding story of
Owen's homeland, even if she was having a hard time holding her tongue.
For her part, Kahlan, while she could sympathize with Cara's difficulty
in holding her tongue, was transfixed by the tale of a mysterious empire
that Richard casually, effortlessly, drew from this man who had poisoned
him. She couldn't imagine where Richard was going with his matter-of-fact
questions. What did this empire's forms of punishment have to do with
Richard being poisoned? It was clear to her, though, that Richard knew where
he was headed, and that the path he was following was wide and sunlit.
Richard paused before Owen. "What do you do in those instances?-- when
you can't reform someone who has become a danger to everyone. What do an
enlightened people do with that kind of person?"
Owen spoke in a soft voice that carried clearly in the misty
early-morning hush. "We banish them."
"Banish them. You mean, you send them into the boundary?"
Owen nodded.
"But you said that going into the boundary is death. You couldn't
simply send them into the boundary or you would be executing them. You must
have a place to send them through. A special place. A place where you can
banish them, without killing them, but a place where you know they can never
return to harm your people."
Owen nodded again. "Yes. There is such a place. The pass that is
blocked by the boundary is steep and treacherous. But there is a path that
leads down into the boundary. Those ancient ones who protected us by placing
that boundary placed the path as well. The path is said to allow passage
out. Because of the way the mountain descends, it is a difficult path, but
it can be followed."
"And just because of how difficult it is, it's not possible to climb
back up? To enter the Bandakaran Empire?"
Owen chewed his lower lip. "It goes down through a terrible place, a
narrow passageway through the boundary, a lifeless land, where it is said
that death itself lies to each side. The person banished is given no water
or food. He must find his own, on the other side, or perish. We place
watchers at the entrance of the path, where they wait to be sure that the
one banished has gone through and is not lingering in the boundary only to
return. The watchers wait and watch for several weeks to be sure that the
one banished has gone beyond in search of water and food, in search of his
new life away from his people.
"Once beyond, the forest is a terrible place, a frightening place, with
roots that descend over the edge like a land of snakes. The path takes you
down under that cascade of roots and running water. Then, even lower, you
find yourself in a strange land where the trees are far above, reaching for
the distant light, but you see only their roots twisting and stretching down
into the darkness toward the ground. It is said that once you see that
forest of roots towering all around you, you have made it through the
boundary and the pass through the mountains.
"There is said to be no way to enter our land from that other side--to
use the pass to return to our empire.
"Once banished, there is no redemption."
Richard moved up close beside Owen and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"What did you do to be banished, Owen?"
Owen sank forward, putting his face in his hands as he finally broke
down sobbing.
Richard left his hand on Owen's shoulder as he spoke in a compassionate
tone. "Tell me what happened, Owen. Tell me in your own way."
Kahlan was startled to hear, after all Owen had said, that he had
become one of the banished. She saw Jennsen's jaw fall open. Cara lifted an
eyebrow.
Kahlan could see that Richard's hand on Owen's shoulder was an
emotional lifeline for the man. He finally sat up, sniffling back the tears.
He wiped his nose on his sleeve.
He looked up at Richard. "Should I tell you the whole story? All of
it?"
"Yes. I'd like to hear it all, from the beginning."
Kahlan was struck at how much Richard reminded her, at that moment, of
his grandfather, Zedd, and the way Zedd always wanted to hear the whole
story.
"Well, I was happy among my people, with them all around me. They held
me to their breast when I was young. I was always safe in their welcoming
arms. While I knew of other children who became unruly and were put out as
punishment, I never did anything to be put out. I hungered to learn to be
like my people. They taught me the ways of enlightenment. For a time I
served my people as the Wise One.
"Later, my people were pleased with how enlightened I was, how I
embraced them all, and so they made me the speaker of our town. I traveled
to nearby towns to speak the words of what the people of my town all
believed as one. I went to our great cities for the same reason. I was
always happiest, though, when I was home with my closest people.
"I fell in love with a woman from my town. Her name is Marilee."
Owen stared off into his memories. Richard didn't rush him, but waited
patiently until he began again at his own pace.
"It was spring, a little more than two years ago, when we fell joyfully
in love. Marilee and I spent time talking, holding hands, and, when we
could, sitting together while among all the others. Among all the others,
though, I only had eyes for Marilee. She only had eyes for me.
"When we were with others, it felt like we were alone in the world,
Marilee and I, and the world belonged to us alone, that only we had the eyes
to see all its hidden beauty. It is wrong to feel this way, to be so alone
in our hearts is to be selfish and to think our eyes can see so clearly is
sinful pride, but we could not help ourselves. The trees blossomed just for
us. The water in the streams burbled their music just for us. The moon rose
for us alone." Owen slowly shook his head. "You could not understand how it
was ... how we felt."
"I understand quite well how it was," Richard assured him in a quiet
voice.
Owen glanced up at Richard; then his gaze moved to Kahlan. She nodded
to him that it was so. His brow twitched with wonder. He looked away then,
perhaps, Kahlan thought, in guilt.
"Well," Owen said, going back to his story, "I was the speaker of our
town--the one who speaks what all decide that must be decided as being true.
I also sometimes helped other people resolve questions of what is right
according to the tenets of an advanced culture." Owen flicked his hand in a
self-conscious manner. "As I said, I once served my people as the Wise One,
so the people trusted me."
Richard just nodded, not interrupting, even though Kahlan knew that he
didn't quite understand the meaning of many of the details of what Owen was
saying any more than she did. The gist of the story, though, was becoming
all too clear.
"I asked Marilee if she would be my wife, if she would marry me and no
other. She said that it was the happiest day of her life, to be asked by me,
for I said I wanted no other but her. It was the happiest day of my life
when she said she would have me as her husband.
"Everyone was very pleased. Everyone loved us both, and kept us
sheltered in their arms for a long time to show their joy. As we sat
together with everyone, we all talked about the plans for the wedding and
how much we would all be pleased that Marilee and I would be husband and
wife and bring children among our people."
Owen stared off in his thoughts. It seemed that he might have forgotten
that he'd stopped speaking.
"So, was it a grand wedding?" Richard finally prompted.
Owen still stared off. "The men of the Order came. That was when we
first realized that the seal, that had protected our people since the
beginning times, had failed. There was no longer a barrier protecting us.
"Our empire was now naked to savages."
Kahlan knew that what she had done had caused the boundary to fail,
resulting in these people being defenseless. She had had no choice, but that
didn't make it any easier to hear.
"They came to our town, where I was speaker. Our town, like others, has
walls all around; those who gave us our name, Bandakar, proclaimed that
towns should be built such as this. It was wise of them to tell us this. The
walls protect us from the beasts of the forests, make us safe, without
having to harm any creatures.
"The men of the Order set up a camp outside our walls. There was really
no place for them to stay in the town--we have no accommodations to house so
many people because we never have great numbers of visitors from other
towns. Worse, I was fearful of having such men as they looked sleeping under
our roof with us. It was wrong to have such fear; it is my failing, not
theirs, I know, but I had the fear.
"Since I was the speaker for my town, I went out to their camp with
food and offerings. I was filled with my sinful failing of being afraid of
them. They were big, some with long, dark, greasy, tangled hair, some with
shaved heads, many with filthy beards of coarse hair--none of them with fair
sun-golden hair like our people. It was shocking to see them wearing hides
of animals, leather plates, chains and metal, and straps with sharp studs.
Hanging on their belts, they all carried vicious-looking implements the
likes of which I had never in my life imagined, but which I later learned
were weapons.
"I told these strange men that they were welcome to share what we had,
that we would honor them. I told them that they were invited to sit with us,
to share their words with us."
Everyone waited in silence, not wanting to say a word as tears ran down
Owen's face and dripped off his jaw.
"The men of the Order did not sit with us. They did not share their
words with us. Though I spoke to them, they acted as if I were not worthy of
their recognition, other than to grin at me as if they intended to eat me.
"I sought to allay their fears, since it is the fear of others that
causes hostility. I assured the men that we were peaceful and intended them
no ill will. I told them that we would do our best to accommodate them among
us.
"The man who was their speaker, a commander he called himself, spoke to
me then. He told me that his name was Luchan. His shoulders were twice as
wide as mine, even though he was no taller than me. This man, Luchan, said
that he did not believe me. I was horrified to hear this. He said that he
thought my people meant him harm. He accused us of wishing to kill his men.
I was shaken that he would think such a thing of us, especially after I had
told him of our open welcome to his men. I was shaken to know that I had
done something to cause him to feel we were threatening to him and his men.
I assured him of our desire to be peaceful with them.
"Luchan smiled at me then, not a smile of happiness, not a smile like I
had ever seen before. He said that they were going to burn down our town and
kill all the people in it to prevent us from attacking his men as they
slept. I begged him to believe our peaceful ways, to sit with us and share
his worries and we would do what we needed to do to dispel such doubts and
show him our love of him for being our fellow man.
"Luchan said, then, that he would not burn down our town and kill us
all upon a condition, as he called it. He said that if I would surrender my
woman to him as a token of my sincerity and goodwill he would then believe
our words. He said that if, on the other hand, I failed to send her out to
him, what happened would be my fault, would be on my head, for not
cooperating with them, for not showing my sincerity and goodwill toward
them.
"I went back to hear the words of my people. Everyone agreed and said
that I must do this--that I must send Marilee out to the men of the Order so
that they would not burn down our town and murder everyone. I asked them not
to decide so quickly, and offered the idea that we could close the gates in
the wall to keep the men from coming in and harming us. My people said that
men such as these would find a way to break the wall, and then they would
murder everyone for shutting our gates and shaming them with our bigotry
toward them. The people all spoke up loudly that I must show the man Luchan
goodwill and our peaceful intent, that I must allay his fears of us.
"I never felt so alone among my people. I could not go against the word
of everyone, for it is taught that only the voices of people joined together
in one voice can be wise enough to know the true way. No one person can know
what is right. Only consensus can make a thing right.
"My knees trembled as I stood before Marilee. I heard myself ask if she
wished me to do as the men wanted--as our people wanted. I told her that I
would run away with her if she would wish it. She wept as she said that she
would not hear such sinful talk from me, for it would mean the death of
everyone else.
"She said that she must go to the men of the Order to appease them or
there would be violence. She told me that she would tell them of our
peaceful ways and thus gentle them toward us.
"I was proud of Marilee for upholding the highest values of our people.
I wanted to die for being proud of such a thing as would take her from me.
"I kissed Marilee a last time, but I could not stop my tears. I held
her in my arms and we wept together.
"Then, I took her out to the man who was their commander, Luchan. He
had a thick black beard, a shaved head, and a ring through one ear and one
nostril. He said that I had made a wise choice. His sundarkened arms were
nearly as big around as Marilee's waist. His big filthy hand took Marilee by
her arm and bore her away with him as he turned back and told me to 'scurry
back' to my town, to my people. His men laughed at me as they watched me go
back up the road.
"The men of the Order left my town and my people alone. We had peace I
had purchased with Marilee.
"I had no peace in my heart.
"For a time, the men of the Order were gone from our town. They
returned, then, one afternoon, and called for me to come out. I asked Luchan
about Marilee, if she was well, if she was happy. Luchan turned his head and
spat, then said he didn't know, that he never asked her. I was worried, and
asked if she spoke with him of our peaceful ways, assured him of our
innocent intent toward him. He said that when he was with women he wasn't
much interested in them for their talking.
"He winked at me. Though I had never seen anyone wink in such a
fashion, I knew his meaning.
"I was very frightened for Marilee, but I reminded myself that nothing
is real, that I could not really know anything from what I was hearing. I
was only hearing what this one man said of things, as he saw them, and I
knew that I was only sensing part of the world. I could not know reality
from my eyes and ears alone.
"Luchan said, then, that I should open the town gates lest they think
we were acting in a hostile way toward them. Luchan said that if we failed
to do as he asked, it would begin a cycle of violence.
"I went back and spoke his words to all the people gathered around me.
My people all spoke in one voice, and said that we must open the gates and
invite them in to prove that we held no hostility, no prejudice, toward the
men.
"The men of the Order came in through those gates we let stand wide for
them and seized nearly all the women, from those still the age of girls to
grandmothers. I stood with the other men, begging them to leave our women
be, to leave us be. I told them that we had agreed to their demands to prove
to them that we meant them no harm, but it did no good. They would not
listen.
"I told Luchan, then, that I had sent Marilee to him as his condition
for peace. I told him that they must honor their agreement. Luchan and his
men laughed.
"I cannot say if what I saw then was real. Reality is in the realm of
fate, and we, in this place we think we know as the world, cannot know it in
full truth. That day, fate swept down on my people; we had no say in it. We
know that we must not fight against fate, for it has already been
foreordained by the true reality we cannot see.
"I watched as our women were dragged away. I watched, unable to do
anything, as they screamed our names, as they reached out for us, as the
hands of those big men held our women and bore them away from us. I had
never heard such screams as I heard that day."
The overcast seemed as if it would soon brush the tops of the trees. In
the thick silence, Kahlan heard a bird in the bristlecone pines singing.
Owen was alone, off in his solitary world of terrible memories. Richard
stood, arms folded, watching the man, but saying nothing.
"I went to other towns," Owen finally said. "In a couple of places, the
Order had been there before me. The men of the Order did much the same to
those towns as they had done to my town; they took the women. In some places
they also took a few men.
"In other places I went, the Order had not come yet. As the speaker of
my town, I told them of what had befallen my town and I urged others to do
something. They were angry with me and said it was wrong to resist, that to
resist was to give in to violence, to become no better than the savages.
They urged me to renounce my outspoken ways and to heed the wisdom of the
joined voices of our people that had brought enlightenment and thousands of
years of peace. They told me that I was only looking at events through my
limited eyes, and not the better judgment of the group.
"I went then to one of our important cities and told them again that
the seal on the pass was broken and that the Imperial Order was upon us, and
that something must be done. I urged them to listen to me and to consider
what we could do to protect our people.
"Because I was so inconsiderately assertive, the assembly of speakers
took me to the Wise One so that I might have his counsel. It is a great
honor to have the words of the Wise One. The Wise One told me that I must
forgive those who had done these things against my people, if we were to end
the violence.
"The Wise One said that the anger and hostility shown by the men of the
Order was a mark of their inner pain, a cry for help, and they must be shown
compassion and understanding. I should have been humbled by such clear
wisdom as could only come from the Wise One, but instead I spoke out of my
wish for Marilee and all the other people to be returned from such men, and
for the speakers to help me in this.
"The Wise One said that Marilee would find her own happiness without me
and that I was guilty of selfishness for wanting to keep her for myself. He
said that fate had come for the other people and it was not my place to make
demands of fate.
"I asserted to the speakers and the Wise One that the men of the Order
had not upheld the agreement made by Luchan for Marilee to be sent to them.
The Wise One said that Marilee had acted properly by going in peace to the
men so that the cycle of violence would end. He said that it was selfish and
sinful for me to put my wants above peace she selflessly worked toward and
that my attitude toward them was probably what had provoked the men to
anger.
"I asked what I was to do, when I had acted honestly but they had not.
The Wise One said that I was wrong to condemn men I did not know, men I had
not first forgiven, or tried to embrace, or even to understand. He said that
I must encourage them in the ways of peace by throwing myself before them
and begging them to forgive me for acting in a way that kindled their inner
pain by reminding them of past wrongs done to them.
"I told the Wise One, then, in front of all the other speakers, that I
did not want to forgive these men or to embrace these men, but that I wanted
to cast them out of our lives.
"I was given a denunciation."
Richard handed Owen a cup of water but said nothing. Owen sipped at the
water without seeing it.
"The gathering of speakers commanded me to go back to my town and seek
the advice of those among whom I lived, commanding that I ask my people to
counsel me back to our ways. I went back intending to redeem myself, only to
discover that it had become worse than before.
"Now, the Order had returned to take whatever they wanted from the
town--food and goods. We would have given them whatever they wanted, but
they never asked, they just took. More of our men had been taken away,
too--some of the boys and some of those who were young and strong. Other
men, who had in some way offended the dignity of the men of the Order, had
been murdered.
"People I knew stood staring with empty eyes at blood where our friends
had died. In other such places, people gathered to mound remembrances over
the blood. These places had become sacred shrines and people knelt there to
pray. The children would not stop crying. No one would counsel me.
"Everyone in my town trembled behind doors, but they cast their eyes
down and opened those doors when the men of the Order knocked, lest we
offend them.
"I could not stand to be in our town any longer. I ran to the country,
even though I was terrified that I would be alone. There, in the hills, I
found other men, selfish as I, hiding in fear for their lives. Together, we
decided to try to do something, to try to bring an end to the misery. We
resolved to restore peace.
"At first, we sent representatives to speak with the men of the Order,
to let them know that we meant them no harm, and that we only sought peace
with them, and to ask what we could do to satisfy them. The men of the Order
hung these men by their ankles from poles at the edge of our town and
skinned them alive.
"I knew these men all my life, these men who had counseled me, advised
me, broken fasts with me, sheltered me in their arms with joy when I had
told them Marilee and I wanted to be wed. The men of the Order left these
poor men to hang by their ankles as they screamed in agony in the hot summer
sun, where the black-tipped races came and found them.
"I reminded myself that what I saw that day was not real, and that I
should not believe such sights, that possibly my eyes were deceiving me as
punishment for having improper thoughts, and that my mind could not possibly
know if this sight was real or an illusion.
"Not every man that had gone to speak with the men of the Order was
killed. A few of our men were sent back to us with word from the Order. They
said that if we did not come down out of the hills and return to their rule
in our town, to show that we did not intend to attack them, then they would
begin skinning a dozen people a day, and hanging them on poles for the
races, until either we returned to demonstrate our peaceful intent, or until
every last person left in the town was skinned alive.
"Many of our men wept, unable to stand to think that they would be the
cause of a cycle of violence, so they went back to the town to show that
they intended no harm.
"Not all of us went back. A few of us remained in the hills. Since most
returned, and the Order had no count of us, they thought all had complied
with their command.
"Those few of us who were left in the hills hid, living off the nuts,
fruits, and berries we could find or the food we snuck back and stole. We
slowly gathered together supplies to see us through. I told the other men
with me that we should find out what the Order was doing with our people
they had taken away. Since the men of the Order didn't know us, we could
sometimes mingle in with people working the fields or tending to animals and
sneak back into our town without the Order knowing who we were--without
knowing that we were men from the hills. Over the next months, we followed
and watched the men of the Order.
"The children had been sent away, but the men of the Order had taken
all the women to a place they built--an encampment, they called it--that
they fortified against attack."
Owen put his face in his hands again as he spoke through sobs. "They
were using our women as breeding stock. They sought to have them bear
children--as many children as they could birth--children of their soldiers.
Some women were already pregnant. Most of those who weren't already pregnant
became pregnant. Over the next year and a half, many children were born.
They were nursed for a time, and then they were all sent away as their
mothers were gotten pregnant again.
"I don't know where these children were taken--somewhere beyond our
empire. The men who had been taken from the towns were also taken away
beyond our empire.
"The men of the Order did not watch their captives well, since our
people shunned violence, so a couple of men escaped and ran to the hills,
where they found us. They told us that the Order had taken them to see the
women, and told them that if they did not do as they were told, if they did
not follow all the orders they were given, then all these women before them
would die--that they would be skinned alive. These men who escaped did not
know where they were to be taken, or what it was they were to do, only that
if they did not follow the instructions given them, then they would be the
cause of the violence to our women.
"After a year and a half of hiding, of meeting with others, we learned
that the Order had spread to other places in our empire, taken other towns
and cities. The Wise One and the speakers went into hiding. We discovered
that some towns and cities had invited the Order to come in, to be among
them, in an attempt to appease them and keep them from doing harm.
"No matter how hard our people tried, their concessions failed to
placate the belligerence of the men of the Order. We could not understand
why this was true.
"In some of the largest cities, though, it was different. The people
there had listened to the speakers of the Order and had come to believe that
the cause of the Imperial Order was the same as our cause--to bring an end
to abuse and injustice. The Order convinced these people that they abhorred
violence, that they had been enlightened as were our people, but they had to
turn to violence to defeat those who would oppress us all. They said that
they were champions of our people's cause of enlightenment. The people there
rejoiced that they were at last in the hands of saviors who would spread our
words of enlightenment to the savages who did not yet live by peace."
Richard, a thunderstorm building, could hold his tongue no longer. "And
even after all the brutality, these people believed the words of the
Imperial Order?"
Owen spread his hands. "The people in those places were swayed by the
words of the Order--that they were fighting for the same ideals as we lived
by. They told our people in those cities that they had only acted as they
did because my town and some of the other places like it had sided with the
savages from the north--with the D'Haran Empire.
"I had heard this name before--the D'Haran Empire. During the year and
a half that I lived in the hills with the other men, I sometimes traveled
out of our land, out into the surrounding places, to see what I could
discover that might help us to cast the Imperial Order out of Bandakar.
While I was out of my land, I went to some of the cities in the Old World,
as I learned it was called. In one place, Altur'Rang, I heard whispers of a
great man from the north, from the D'Haran Empire, who brought freedom.
"Other of my men also went out to other places. When we returned, we
all told each other what we had seen, what we had heard. All those who came
back told of the same thing, told of hearing of one called Lord Rahl, and
his wife, the Mother Confessor, who fought the Imperial Order.
"Then, we learned where the Wise One was being kept safe, as were most
of our greatest speakers. It was in our greatest city, a place where the
Order had not yet come. The Order was busy with other places and so they
were in no hurry. My people were going nowhere--they had nowhere to go.
"The men who were with me wanted me to be their speaker, to go to talk
with these great speakers, to convince them that we must do something to
stop the Imperial Order and cast them out of Bandakar.
"I journeyed to the great city, a place I had never been before, and I
was inspired at seeing a place that such a great culture as ours had built.
A culture about to be destroyed, if I could not convince these great
speakers and the Wise One to think of something to do to stop the Order.
"I spoke before them with great urgency. I told them of all the Order
had done. I told them of the men I had in hiding, waiting for word of what
they were to do.
"The great speakers said that I cannot know the true nature of the
Order from what I and a few men had seen--that the Imperial Order was a vast
nation and we saw only a tiny speck of their people. They said that men
cannot do such cruel acts as I described because it would cause them to
shrink back in horror before they could complete them. To prove it, they
suggested that I try to skin one of them. I admitted that I could not, but I
told them that I had seen the men of the Order do this.
"The speakers scorned my insistence that it was real. They said I must
always keep in mind that reality is not for us to know. They said that the
men of the Imperial Order were probably frightened that we might be a
violent people, and simply wanted to test our resolve by tricking us into
believing that the things I described were real so that they could see how
we reacted--if peace was really our way, or if we would attack them.
"The great speakers said, then, that I could not know if I really saw
all the things I said, and that even if I did, I could not judge if they
were for the bad, or the good--that I was not the person to judge the
reasons of men I did not know, that to do so would be to believe that I was
above them, and to put myself above them would be an act of prejudiced
hostility.
"I could only think of all the things I had seen, of the men with me
who all agreed that we must convince the great speakers to act to preserve
our empire. I could only see in my mind the face of Luchan. And then, I
thought of Marilee in the hands of this man. I thought of the sacrifice she
had made, and how her life was cast away into this horror for nothing.
"I stood up before the great speakers and screamed that they were
evil."
Cara snorted a laugh. "Seems you can tell what's real, when you put
your mind to it."
Richard shot her a withering glare.
Owen glanced up and blinked. His thoughts had been so distant as he
told his story that he hadn't really heard her. He looked up at Richard.
"That was when they banished me," he said.
"But the boundary seal had failed," Richard said. "You had already come
and gone through the pass. How could they enforce a banishment with the
boundary down?"
Owen waved dismissively. "They do not need the wall of death.
Banishment is in a way a sentence of death--the death of the person as a
citizen of Bandakar. My name would be known throughout the empire, at least
what was left of it, and every person would shun me. I would be turned away
from every door. I was one of the banished. No one would want to have any
contact with me. I was now an outcast. It does not matter that they could
not put me beyond the barrier; they put me beyond my people. That was worse.
"I went back to my men in the hills to collect my things and confess to
them that I had been banished. I was going to go out beyond our homeland, as
I had been commanded by the will of our people through our great speakers.
"But my men, those in the hills, they would not see me go. They said
that the banishment was wrong. These men had seen the things I had seen.
They had wives, mothers, daughters, sisters who had been taken away. They
all had seen their friends murdered, seen the men skinned alive and left to
suffer in agony as they died, seen the races come to circle over them as
they hung on those poles. They said that since all our eyes had seen these
things, then these things must be true, must be real.
"They all said that we had gone into the hills because we love our land
and want to restore the peace we once had. They said that the great speakers
were the ones whose eyes did not see and they were condemning our people to
murder at the hands of savage men and those of our people who lived to a
cruel life under the rule of the Imperial Order, to be used as breeding
stock or as slaves.
"I was shocked that these men would not reject me for being
banished--that they wanted me to stay with them.
"It was then that we decided that we would be the ones to do something,
to come up with the plan we always wanted the speakers to decide. When I
asked what would be our plan, everyone said the same thing.
"They all said that we must get Lord Rahl to come and give us freedom.
They all spoke with one voice.
"We decided, then, what we would do. Some men said that one such as the
Lord Rahl would come to cast out the Order when we asked.
Others thought you might not be willing, since you are unenlightened
and not of our ways, not of our people. When we considered that possibility,
we decided that we must have a way to insure you would have to come, should
you refuse us.
"Since I was banished, I said that it was upon me to do this thing.
Except to live in the hills with my men, I could have no life among our
people unless we cast out the Imperial Order and our ways were restored to
us. I told the men that I did not know where I could find the Lord Rahl, but
that I would not give up until I did so.
"First, though, one of the men, an older man who had spent his life
working with herbs and cures, made me the poison I put into your waterskin.
He made me the antidote as well. He told me how the poison worked, and how
it could be counteracted, since none of us wished to consider that it would
come to murder, even of an unenlightened man."
By the sidelong look Richard gave her, Kahlan knew that he wanted her
to hold her tongue, and knew that she was having difficulty doing so. She
redoubled her effort.
"I was worried about how I would find you," Owen said to Richard, "but
I knew I had to. Before I could go in search of you, though, I had to hide
the rest of the antidote, as was our plan.
"While in a city where the Order had won the people to their side, I
heard some people at a market say that it was a great honor that the very
man who had come to their city was the most important man among all those of
the Imperial Order in Bandakar. The thought struck me that this man might
know something of the man the Order hated most--Lord Rahl.
"I stayed in the city for several days, watching the place where this
man was said to be. I watched the soldiers come and go. I saw that they
sometimes took people in with them, and then later the people came back out.
"One day I saw people come back out and they did not appear to be
harmed, so I made my way close to them to hear what they might say. I heard
them talk that they had seen the great man himself. I could not hear much of
what they said of their visit inside, but none said that they were hurt.
"And then I saw the soldiers come out, and I suspected that they might
be going to get more people to take them in to see this great man, so I went
before them into a central gathering square. I waited, then, near the open
isles between the public benches. The soldiers rushed in and gathered up a
small crowd of people and I was swept up with the others.
"I was terrified of what would happen to me, but I thought this might
be my only chance to go in the building with this important man, my only
chance to see what he looked like, to see the place where he was so I could
know where to sneak back and listen, as I had learned to do when living in
the hills with my men. I had resolved to do this to see if I could learn any
information on Lord Rahl. Still, I was trembling with worry when they took
us all into the building and down halls and up stairs to the top floor.
"I feared that I was being led to the slaughter and wanted to run, but
I thought, then, of my men back in the hills, depending on me to find the
Lord Rahl and get him to come to Bandakar and give us freedom.
"We were taken through a heavy door into a dim room that filled me with
fear because it stank of blood. The windows on two walls of the stark room
were closed off by shutters. I saw that across the room there was a table
with a broad bowl and, nearby, a row of fat, sharpened wooden stakes
standing nearly as tall as my chest. They were stained dark with blood and
gore.
"Two women and a man with us fainted. Out of anger, the soldiers kicked
them in the heads. When the people did not rise, the soldiers dragged them
away by their arms. I saw blood trails smear along the floor behind them. I
didn't want to have my head caved in by the boot of one of these gruesome
men, so I resolved not to faint.
"A man swept into the room, suddenly, like a chill wind. I had not ever
been afraid of any man, even Luchan, like I was afraid of this man. He was
dressed in layer upon layer of cloth strips that flowed out behind as he
moved. His jet black hair was swept back and smoothed with oils that made it
glisten. His nose seemed to stick out even more than it would have, had he
not slicked back his hair. His small black eyes were rimmed in red. When
those beady eyes fixed on me, I had to remind myself that I had vowed not to
faint.
"He peered at each person in turn as he slowly walked past us, as if he
were picking out a turnip for dinner. It was then, as his knobby fingers
came out from his odd clothes to point in a waving manner at one person and
then another until he had pointed out five people, that I saw that his
fingernails were all painted as black as his hair.
"His hand waved, dismissing the rest of us. The soldiers moved between
the five people this man had pointed out and the rest of us. They started
pushing us toward the door, but just then, before we could be ushered out, a
commander with a nose that had been flattened to the side, as if from being
broken repeatedly, came in and said that the messenger had arrived. The man
with the black hair ran his black nails back through his black hair and told
the commander to tell the messenger to wait, that by morning he would have
the latest information.
"I was then led out and down the stairs along with the rest of the
people. We were taken outside and told to go away, that our services
wouldn't be needed. The soldiers laughed when they said this. I left with
the others, so as not to make the men angry. The people all whispered about
having seen the great man himself. I could think only of what the latest
information might be.
"Later, after dark, I sneaked back, and in the rear of the building I
discovered, behind a gate through a high wooden fence, a narrow alleyway. In
the dark, I entered the alley and hid myself inside a doorway entrance to
the back hall of the building. There were passageways beyond, and, in the
candlelight, I recognized one passage as the place I had been earlier.
"It was late and there was no one in the halls. I moved deeper into the
passageways. Rooms and recesses lined each side of the hall, but with the
late hour no one came out. I sneaked up the stairs and crept to the big
thick door to the room where I had been taken.
"It was there, in that dark hall before the big door, that I heard the
most horrifying cries I have ever heard. People were begging and weeping for
their lives, crying for mercy. One woman pleaded endlessly to be put to
death to end her suffering.
"I thought I would vomit, or faint, but one thought kept me still and
hidden, kept me from running as fast as my legs would carry me. That was the
thought that this was the fate of all my people if I did not help them by
bringing Lord Rahl.
"I stayed there all night, in a dark recess in a hall across from the
big door, listening to those poor people in unimaginable agony. I don't know
what the man was doing to them, but I thought I would die of sorrow for
their slow suffering. The whole of the night, the moans of agony never
ceased.
"I shivered in my hiding place, weeping, and told myself that it wasn't
real, that I shouldn't be afraid of what was not real. I imagined the
people's pain, but told myself that I was putting my imagination on top of
my senses--the very thing I had been taught was wrong. I put my thoughts to
Marilee, the times we had been together, and ignored the sounds that were
not real. I could not know what was real, what these sounds really were.
"Early in the morning the commander I had seen before returned. I
peeked carefully out from my dark hiding place. The man with the black hair
came to the door. I knew it was him because when his arm came out of the
room to hand the man a scrolled paper, I saw his black fingernails.
"The man with the black hair said to the commander with the flattened,
crooked nose, he called him 'Najari,' that he had found them. That's what he
said--'them.' Then he said, 'They've made it to the east edge of the
wasteland and are now heading north.' He told the man to give the messenger
the orders right away. Najari said, 'Shouldn't be long, then, Nicholas, and
you will have them and we'll have the power to name our price.' "
Richard spun around. "Nicholas? You heard him say that name?"
Owen blinked in surprise. "Yes. I'm sure of it. He said Nicholas."
Kahlan felt a weary hopelessness settle over her, like the cold, wet
mist.
Richard gestured urgently. "Go on."
"Well, I wasn't sure that they were talking about you--about the Lord
Rahl and the Mother Confessor--when the commander said 'them,' but by the
grim excitement in their voices I had the impression that it was so. Their
voices reminded me of the first time the Order came, at the way Luchan
smiled at me in a way I had never seen before, like he might eat me.
"I thought that this information was my best chance to find you. So I
started out at once."
Borne on a light gust, drizzle replaced the morning mist. Kahlan
realized that she was shivering with the cold.
Richard pointed at the man sitting on the ground not far away, the man
with the notch in his right ear, the man Kahlan had touched. Some of the
storm within Richard boiled to the surface.
"There is the man the orders from Nicholas were sent to. He brought
with him those men you saw at our last camp. Had we not defended ourselves,
had we put our own sincere hatred of violence above the nature of reality,
we would be as lost as Marilee."
Owen stared at the man. "What is his name?"
"I don't know and it doesn't matter to me in the least. He fought for
the Imperial Order--fought to uphold a view of all life, including his, as
unimportant, interchangeable, expendable in the mindless pursuit of an ideal
that holds individual lives as worthless in themselves--a tenet that demands
sacrifice to others until you are nothing.
"He fights for the dream of everybody to be nobody and nothing.
"The beliefs of the Order hold that you had no right to love Marilee,
that everyone is the same and so your duty should be to marry someone who
could best use your help. In that way, through selfless sacrifice, you would
properly serve your fellow man. Despite how you struggle not to see what's
before your eyes, Owen, I think somewhere beneath all your regurgitated
teachings, you know that that is the greatest horror brought by the
Order--not their brutality, but their ideas. It is their beliefs that
sanction brutality, and yours that invite it.
"He didn't value his own life, who he was; why should I care what his
name was. I give him what was his greatest ambition: nothingness."
When Richard saw Kahlan shivering in the cold drizzle, he withdrew his
hot glare from Owen and retrieved her cloak from her pack in the wagon. With
the utmost gentleness and care, he wrapped it around her shoulders. By the
look on his face, he seemed to have had all he could take of listening to
Owen.
Kahlan seized his hand, holding it to her cheek for a moment. There was
some small good in the story they had heard from Owen.
"This means that the gift isn't killing you, Richard," she said in a
confidential tone. "It was the poison."
She was relieved that they hadn't run out of time to get him help, as
she had so feared on that brief, eternal wagon ride when he'd been
unconscious.
"I had the headaches before I ran into Owen. I still have the
headaches. The sword's magic as well faltered before I was poisoned."
"But at least this now gives us more time to find the solutions to
those problems."
He ran his fingers back through his hair. "I'm afraid we have worse
problems, now, and not the time you think."
"Worse problems?"
Richard nodded. "You know the empire Owen comes from? Ban-dakar? Guess
what 'Bandakar' means."
Kahlan glanced at Owen sitting hunched on the crate and all by himself.
She shook her head as her gaze returned to Richard's gray eyes, troubled
more by the suppressed rage in his voice than anything else.
"I don't know, what?"
"In High D'Haran it's a name. It means 'the banished.' Remember from
the book, The Pillars of Creation, when I was telling you what it said about
how they decided to send all the pristinely ungifted people away to the Old
World--to banish them? Remember that I said no one ever knew what became of
them?
"We just found out.
"The world is now naked before the people of the Bandakaran Empire."
Kahlan frowned. "How can you know for certain that he is a descendant
of those people?"
"Look at him. He's blond and looks more like full-blooded D'Harans than
he does the people down here in the Old World. More importantly, though,
he's not affected by magic."
"But that could be just him."
Richard leaned in closer. "In a closed place like he comes from, a
place shut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, even one
pillar of Creation would have spread that ungifted trait throughout the
entire population by now.
"But there wasn't just one; they were all ungifted. For that, they were
banished to the Old World, and in the Old World, where they tried to
establish a new life, they were again all collected and banished to that
place beyond those mountains--a place they were told was for the bandakar,
the banished."
"How did the people in the Old World find out about them? How did they
keep them all together, without a single one surviving to spread their
ungifted trait to the general population, and how did they manage to then
put them all in that place--banish them?"
"Good questions, all, but right now not the important ones.
"Owen," Richard called as he turned back to the others, "I want you to
stay right there, please, while the rest of us decide what will be our
single voice about what we must do."
Owen brightened at a method of doing things with which he identified
and felt comfortable. He didn't seem to detect, as did Kahlan, the
undercurrent of sarcasm in Richard's voice.
"You," Richard said to the man Kahlan had touched, "go sit beside him
and see that he waits there with you."
While the man scurried to do as he was told, Richard tilted his head in
gesture to the rest of them, calling them away with him. "We need to talk."
Friedrich, Tom, Jennsen, Cara, and Kahlan followed Richard away from
Owen and the man. Richard leaned back against the chafing rail of the wagon
and folded his arms as they all gathered close around him. He took time to
appraise each face looking at him.
"We have big problems," Richard began, "and not just from the poison
Owen gave me. Owen isn't gifted. He's like you, Jennsen. Magic doesn't touch
him." His gaze remained locked on Jennsen's. "The rest of his people are the
same as he, as you."
Jennsen's jaw fell open in astonishment. She looked confused, as if
unable to reconcile it all in her mind. Friedrich and Tom looked nearly as
startled. Cara's brow drew down in a dark frown.
"Richard," Jennsen finally said, "that just can't be. There's too many
of them. There's no way that they can all be half brothers and sisters of
ours."
"They aren't half brothers and sisters," Richard said. "They're a line
of people descended from the House of Rahl--people like you. I don't have
time right now to explain all of it to you, but remember how I told you that
you would bear children who were like you, and they would pass that
pristinely ungifted trait on to all future generations? Well, back a long
time ago, there were people like that spreading in D'Hara. The people back
then gathered up all these ungifted people and sent them to the Old World.
The people down here then sealed them away beyond those mountains, there.
The name of their empire, Bandakar, means 'the banished.' "
Jennsen's big blue eyes filled with tears. She was one of those people,
people so hated that they had been banished from the rest of the people in
their own land and sent into exile.
Kahlan put an arm around her shoulders. "Remember how you said that you
felt alone in the world?" Kahlan smiled warmly. "You don't have to feel
alone anymore. There are people like you."
Kahlan didn't think her words seemed to help much, but Jennsen welcomed
the comfort of the embrace.
Jennsen abruptly looked back up at Richard. "That can't be true. They
had a boundary that kept them locked in that place. If they were like me
they wouldn't be affected by a boundary of magic. They could have come out
of there any time they wished. Over all this time, at least some of them
would have come out into the rest of the world-- the magic of the boundary
couldn't have held them back."
"I don't think that's true," Richard said. "Remember when you saw the
sand flowing sideways in that warning beacon that Sabar brought us? That was
magic, and you saw it."
"That's right," Kahlan said. "If she's a pillar of Creation, then how
is such a thing possible?"
"That's right," Jennsen agreed. "How could that be, if I'm truly
ungifted?" Her eyebrows went up. "Richard--maybe it's not true after all.
Maybe I have a bit of the spark of the gift--maybe I'm not really, truly
ungifted."
Richard smiled. "Jennsen, you're as pure as a snowflake. You saw that
magic for a reason. Nicci wrote us in her letter that the warning beacon was
linked to the wizard who created it--linked to him in the underworld. The
underworld is the world of the dead. That means that the statue functioned
partly through Subtractive Magic--magic having to do with the underworld.
You may be immune to magic, but you are not immune to death. Gifted or not,
you're still linked to life, and thus death.
"That's why you saw some of the magic of the statue--the part relating
to the advancement of death.
"The boundary was a place in this world where death itself existed.
To go into that boundary was to enter the world of the dead. No one
returns from the dead. If any pristinely ungifted person in Bandakar had
gone into the boundary, they would have died. That was how they were sealed
in."
"But they could banish people through the boundary," Jennsen pressed.
"That would have to mean that the boundary didn't really affect them."
Richard was shaking his head even as she was protesting. "No. They were
touched by death, the same as anyone. But there was a way left through the
boundary--much like the one that once divided the three lands of the New
World. I got through that boundary without being touched by it. There was a
pass through it, a special, hidden place to get through the boundary. This
one was the same."
Jennsen wrinkled her nose. "That makes no sense, then. If that was
true, and it wasn't hidden from them--since they all knew of this passage
through the boundary--then why couldn't they all just leave if they wanted
to? How could it seal the rest of them in, if they could send banished
people through?"
Richard sighed, wiping a hand across his face. It looked to Kahlan like
he wished she hadn't asked that question.
"You know the area we passed a while back?" Richard asked her. "That
place where nothing grew?"
Jennsen nodded. "I remember."
"Well, Sabar said he came through another one, a little to the north of
here."
"That's right," Kahlan said. "And it ran toward the center of the
wasteland, toward the Pillars of Creation--just like the one we saw. They
had to be roughly parallel."
Richard was nodding to what she was beginning to suspect. "And they
were to either side of the notch into Bandakar. They weren't very far apart.
We're in that place right now, between those two boundaries."
Friedrich leaned in. "But Lord Rahl, that would mean that if someone
was banished from the Bandakaran Empire, when they emerged from that
boundary they would find themselves trapped between the walls of these two
boundaries out here, and there wasn't much room between them. A person would
have nowhere to go but..."
Friedrich covered his mouth as he turned west, looking off into the
gloom.
"The Pillars of Creation," Richard finished with quiet finality.
"But, but," Jennsen stammered, "are you saying that someone made it
that way? Made these two boundaries deliberately to force anyone who was
sent out of the Bandakaran Empire to go into that place--the Pillars of
Creation? Why?"
Richard looked into her eyes for a long moment. "To kill them."
Jennsen swallowed. "You mean, whoever banished these people wanted
anyone they in turn sent out, anyone they exiled, to die?"
"Yes," Richard said.
Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself. It had been hot for so
long she could hardly believe that the weather had so suddenly turned cold.
Richard swiped a lock of wet hair back off his forehead as he went on.
"From what Adie told me once, boundaries have to have a pass to create
balance on both sides, to equalize the life on both sides. I suspect that
those down here in the Old World who banished these people wanted to give
them a way to get rid of criminals and so told the people about the
existence of the pass. But they didn't want such people to be loosed on the
rest of the world. Criminals or not, they were ungifted. They couldn't be
allowed to run free."
Kahlan immediately saw the problem with his theory. "But all three
boundaries would have had to have a pass," she said. "Even if the other two
passes, in the remaining two boundaries, were secret, that still left the
possibility that anyone exiled and sent through the notch might find one of
them and so not try to escape through the Pillars of Creation where they
would die. That left the chance that they might still escape into the Old
World."
"If there really were three boundaries, such might be the case,"
Richard said. "But I don't think there were three. I think there really was
only one."
"Now you're not making any sense," Cara complained. "You said there was
the one going north and south blocking the pass, and then there were these
two parallel ones out here, going east and west, to funnel anyone who came
out of the empire through that first boundary, toward the Pillars of
Creation where they would die."
Kahlan had to agree. It seemed that there might be a chance for someone
to escape through one of the other two.
"I don't think there were three boundaries," Richard repeated. "I think
there was only one. That one boundary wasn't straight--it was bent in half."
He held two fingers up, side by side. "The bottom of the bend went across
the pass." He pointed at the web between the two fingers. "The two legs
extended out here, parallel, going off to where they ended at the Pillars."
Jennsen could only ask "Why?"
"It seems to me, by how elaborate the whole design was, that the ones
who sealed those people in wanted to give them a way to rid themselves of
dangerous people, possibly knowing from what they had learned of their
beliefs that they would balk at executing anyone. When these people were
banished here to the Old World, they may have already had at least the core
of the same beliefs they hold now. Those beliefs leave them completely
vulnerable to those who are evil. Protecting their way of life, without
executing criminals, meant they had to cast such people out of their
community or be destroyed by them.
"The banishment away from D'Hara and the New World, across the barrier
into the Old World, must have terrified them. They stuck together as a means
of survival, a common bond.
"Those down here in the Old World who put them behind that boundary
must have used those people's fear of persecution to convince them that the
boundary was meant to protect them, to keep others from harming them. They
must have convinced those people that, since they were special, they needed
such protection. That, along with their well-established need to stick
together, had to have reinforced in them a terrible fear of being put out of
their protected place. Banishment had a special terror to those people.
"They must have felt the anguish of being rejected by the rest of the
peoples of the world because they were ungifted, but, together as they were,
they also felt safe behind the boundary.
"Now that the seal is off, we have big problems."
Jennsen folded her arms. "Now that there's more than one of us-- more
than one snowflake--you're having worries about a snowstorm?"
Richard fixed her with a reproachful look. "Why do you think the Order
came in and took some of their people?"
"Apparently," Jennsen said, "to breed more children like them. To breed
precious magic out of the race of man."
Richard ignored the heat in her words. "No, I mean why would they take
men?"
"Same reason," Jennsen said. "To mate with regular women and give them
ungifted children."
Richard drew in a patient breath and let it out slowly. "What did Owen
say? The men were taken to see the women and told that if they didn't follow
orders those women would be skinned alive."
Jennsen hesitated. "What orders?"
Richard leaned toward her. "What orders, indeed. Think about it," he
said, looking around at the rest of them. "What orders? What would they want
ungifted men for? What is it they would want ungifted men to do?"
Kahlan gasped. "The Keep!"
"Exactly." Richard's unsettling gaze met each of them in turn. "Like I
said, we have big problems. Zedd is protecting the Keep. With his ability
and the magic of that place he can no doubt single-handedly hold off
Jagang's entire army.
"But how is that skinny old man going to resist even one young ungifted
man who is untouched by magic and comes up and grabs him by the throat?"
Jennsen's hand came away from her mouth. "You're right, Richard.
Jagang, too, has that book--The Pillars of Creation. He knows how those like
me aren't touched by magic. He tried to use me in that very way. That's why
he worked so hard to convince me that you were trying to kill me--so that I
would think my only chance was to kill you first. He knew I was ungifted and
couldn't be stopped by magic."
"And, Jagang is from the Old World," Richard added. "In all likelihood
he would have known something about the empire beyond that boundary. For all
we know, in the Old World Bandakar might be legendary, while those in the
New World, beyond the great barrier for three thousand years, would never
have known what happened to those people.
"Now, the Order has been taking men from there and threatening them
with the brutal murder of their defenseless women--women who are loved
ones--if those men don't follow orders. I think those orders are to assault
the Wizard's Keep and capture it for the Imperial Order."
Kahlan's legs shook. If the Keep fell, they would lose the one real
advantage, however limited, they had. With the Keep in the hands of the
Order, all those ancient and deadly things of magic would be available to
Jagang. There was no telling what he might unleash. There were things in the
Keep that could kill them all, Jagang included. He had already proven with
the plague he'd unleashed that he was willing to kill any number to have his
way, that he was willing to use any weapon, even if such weapons decimated
his own people as well.
Even if Jagang did nothing with the Keep, just him having control of it
denied the D'Haran Empire the possibility of finding something there that
could help them. That was, in addition to protecting the Keep, what Zedd was
doing while he was there--trying to find something that would help them win
the war, or at least find a way to put the Imperial Order back behind a
barrier of some kind and confine them to the Old World.
Without the Keep, their cause would likely be hopeless. Resistance
would be nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Without the Keep on
their side, all resistance to Jagang would eventually be crushed. His troops
would pour into every part of the New World. There would be no stopping
them.
With trembling fingers Kahlan clutched her cloak closed. She knew what
awaited her people, what it was like when the Imperial Order invaded and
overpowered places. She had been with the army for nearly a year, fighting
against them. They were like a pack of wild dogs. There was no peace with
such animals after you. They would be satisfied only when they could tear
you apart.
Kahlan had been to cities, like Ebinissia, that had been overrun by
Imperial Order soldiers. In a wild binge of savagery that went on for days,
they had tortured, raped, and murdered every person trapped in the city,
finally leaving it a wasteland of human corpses. None, no matter their age,
had been spared.
That was what the people of the New World had to look forward to.
With enemy troops overrunning all of the New World, any trade that was
not already disrupted would be brought to a standstill. Nearly all
businesses would fail. The livelihood of countless people would be lost.
Food would quickly become scarce, and then simply unavailable at any cost.
People would have no means of supporting themselves and their families.
People would lose everything for which they had worked a lifetime.
Cities, even before the troops arrived, would be in a destructive
panic. When the enemy troops arrived, most people would be burned out of
their homes, driven from their cities and their land. Jagang would steal all
supplies of food for his troops and give conquered land to his favored
elite. The true owners of that land would perish, or become slaves working
their own farms. Those who escaped before the invading horde would
desperately cling to life, living like animals in wild areas.
Most of the population would be in flight, running for their lives.
Hundreds of thousands would be out in the elements without shelter. There
would be little food, and no ability to prepare for winter. When the weather
turned harsh, they would perish in droves.
As civilization crumbled and starvation became the norm, disease would
sweep across the land, catching up those on the run. Families would collapse
as those they depended on suffered agonizingly slow and painful deaths.
Children and the weak would be alone, to be preyed upon as a source of food
for the starving.
Kahlan knew what such widespread disease was like. She knew what it was
to watch people dying by the thousands. She had seen it happen in Aydindril
when the plague was there. She saw scores stricken without warning. She had
watched the old, the young--such good people-- contract something they could
not fight, watched them suffer in misery for days before they died.
Richard had been stricken with that plague. Unlike everyone else,
though, he had gotten it knowingly. Taking the plague deliberately had been
the price to get back to her. He had traded his life just to be with her
again before he died.
That had been a time beyond horror.
Kahlan knew, firsthand, savage desperation. It was then that she had
taken the only chance available to her to save his life. It was then that
she had loosed the chimes. That act had saved Richard's life. She hadn't
known at the time that it would also be a catalyst that would set unforeseen
events into motion.
Because of her desperate act, the boundary to this empire had lost its
power and failed. Because of her, all magic might eventually fail.
Now, because of that boundary failing, the Wizard's Keep, their last
bastion to work a solution against the Order, was in terrible jeopardy.
Kahlan felt as if it was all her fault.
The world was on the brink of destruction. Civilization stood at the
threshold of obliteration in the name of the Order's mindless idea of a
greater good. The Order demanded sacrifice to that greater good; what they
were determined to sacrifice was reason, and, therefore, civilization
itself. Madness had cast its shadow across the world and would have them
all.
They now stood in the edge of the shadow of a dark age. They were all
on the eve of the end times.
Kahlan couldn't say that, though. She couldn't tell them how she felt.
She dared not reveal her despair.
"Richard, we simply can't allow the Order to capture the Keep." Kahlan
could hardly believe how calm and determined her voice sounded. She wondered
if anyone else would believe that she thought they still stood a chance. "We
have to stop them."
"I agree," Richard said.
He sounded determined, too. She wondered if he saw in her eyes the true
depths of her despair.
"First," he said, "the easy part: Nicci and Victor. We have to tell
them that we can't come now. Victor needs to know what we would say to him.
He will need to know that we agree with his plans--that he must proceed and
that he can't wait for us. We've talked with him; he knows what to do. Now,
he must do it, and Priska must know that he has to help.
"Nicci needs to know where we're going. She needs to know that we
believe we've discovered the cause of the warning beacon. She has to know
where we are."
He left unsaid that she had to come to help him if he couldn't get to
her because his gift was killing him.
"She needs to know, too," Richard said, "that we only had a chance to
read part of her warning about what Jagang was doing with the Sisters of the
Dark in creating weapons out of people."
Everyone's eyes widened. They hadn't read the letter.
"Well," Kahlan said, "with all the other problems we have, at least
that's one we won't have to deal with for now."
"We have that much on our side," Richard agreed. He gestured to the man
watching, the man waiting for Kahlan to command him. "We'll send him to
Victor and Nicci so they will know everything."
"And then what?" Cara asked.
"I want Kahlan to command him that when he's finished with carrying out
that part of his orders, he's then to go north and find the Imperial Order
army. I want him to pretend to be one of them to get close enough to
assassinate Emperor Jagang."
Kahlan knew how implausible such a scheme was. By the way everyone
stared in astonishment, they had a good idea, too.
"Jagang has layers of men to protect him from assassination," Jenn-sen
said. "He's always surrounded by special guards. Regular soldiers can't even
get close to him."
"Do you really think he has any chance at all to accomplish such a
thing?" Kahlan asked.
"No," Richard admitted. "The Order will most likely kill him before he
can get to Jagang. But he will be driven by the need to fulfill your orders.
He will be single-minded. I expect he will be killed in the effort, but I
also suspect he will at least make a good attempt of it. I want Jagang to at
least lose some sleep knowing that any of his men might be assassins. I want
him to worry that he will never know who might be trying to kill him. I
don't want him ever to be able to sleep soundly. I want him to be haunted by
nightmares of what might be coming next, of who among his men might be
waiting for an opening."
Kahlan nodded her agreement. Richard appraised the grim faces waiting
for the rest of what he had to say.
"Now, to the most important part of what must be done. It's vital we
get to the Keep and warn Zedd. We can't delay. Jagang is ahead of us in all
this--he's been planning and acting and we never realized what he was up to.
We don't know how soon those ungifted men might be sent north. We haven't a
moment to lose."
"Lord Rahl," Cara reminded him, "you have to get to the antidote before
time runs out. You can't go running off to the Keep to ... Oh, no. Now you
just wait a minute--you're not sending me to the Keep again. I'm not leaving
you at a time like this, at a time when you're next to defenseless. I won't
hear of it and I won't go."
Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. "Cara, I'm not sending you, but
thanks for offering."
Cara folded her arms and shot him a fiery scowl.
"We can't take the wagon up into Bandakar--there's no road--"
"Lord Rahl," Tom interrupted, "without magic you'll need all the steel
you have." He sounded only slightly less emphatic than Cara had.
Richard smiled. "I know, Tom, and I agree. It's Friedrich who I think
must go." Richard turned to Friedrich. "You can take the wagon. An older
man, by himself, will raise less suspicion than would any of the rest of us.
They won't see you as a threat. You will be able to make better time with
the wagon and without having to worry that the Order might snatch you and
put you in the army. Will you do it, Friedrich?"
Friedrich scratched his stubble. A smile came to his weathered face. "I
guess I'm at last being called upon to be a boundary warden, of sorts."
Richard smiled with him. "Friedrich, the boundary has failed. As the
Lord Rahl, I appoint you to the post of boundary warden and ask that you
immediately undertake to warn others of the danger come from out of that
boundary."
Friedrich's smile departed as he put a fist to his heart in salute and
solemn pledge.
Somewhere back in a distant room, where his body waited, Nicholas heard
an insistent noise. He was absorbed in the task at hand, so he ignored the
sound. The light was fading, and although light helped to see, darkness
would not hinder eyes such as he used.
Again, he heard the noise. Indignant that the sound kept calling him,
kept annoying him, kept demanding his attention, he returned to his body.
Someone was banging a fist on the door.
Nicholas rose from the floor, where his body sat cross-legged, taking
his body with him. It was always, at first, disorienting to have to be in
his body again, to be so limited, so confined. It felt awkward to have to
move it about, to use his own muscles, to breathe, to see, to hear with his
own senses.
The knock came again. Irate at the interruption, Nicholas went not to
the door but to the windows, and threw the shutters closed. He cast a hand
out, igniting the torch, and finally stalked to the door. Layered strips of
cloth covering his robes flowed out behind, like a heavy mantle of black
feathers.
"What is it!" He threw open the heavy door and peered out.
Najari stood just outside, in the hall, his weight on one foot, his
thumbs hooked behind his belt. His muscular shoulders nearly touched the
walls to each side. Nicholas saw, then, the huddled crowd behind the man.
Najari's crooked nose, flattened to the left in some of the numerous brawls
his temper got him into, cast an oddly shaped shadow across his cheek.
Anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in a brawl with Najari usually
suffered far worse than a mere broken nose.
Najari waggled a thumb over his shoulder. "You asked for some guests,
Nicholas."
Nicholas raked his nails back through his hair, feeling the silken
smooth pleasure of oils gliding against his palm. He rolled his shoulders,
ruffling away his pique.
Nicholas had been so absorbed in what he had been doing that he had
forgotten that he had requested that Najari bring him some bodies.
"Very good, Najari. Bring them in, then. Let's have a look at them."
Nicholas watched as the commander led the gaggle of people into the
flickering torchlight. Soldiers in the rear herded the stragglers through
the door and into the large room. Heads swiveled around, looking at the
strange, stark surroundings, at the wooden walls, the torches in brackets,
the plank flooring, the lack of furniture other than a stout table. Noses
twitched at the sharp smell of blood.
Nicholas watched carefully as people spotted the sharpened stakes
standing in a line along the wall to their right, stakes as thick as
Najari's wrists.
Nicholas studied the people, watching for the telltales of fear as they
spread out along the wall beside the door. Eyes flitted about, worried, and
at the same time eager to take it all in so they could report to their
friends what they had seen inside. Nicholas knew that he was an object of
great curiosity.
A rare being.
A Slide.
No one knew what his name meant. This day, some would learn.
Nicholas glided past the undulating mob. They were a curious people,
these odd, ungifted creatures, curious like mockingbirds, but not nearly so
bold. Because they were without any spark whatsoever of the gift, Nicholas
had to handle them in special ways in order for them to be of any use to
him. It was a bother, but it had its rewards.
Some necks craned in his wake, trying to better see the rare man.
He ran his nails through his hair again just to feel the oils slide
against his hand. As he leaned close to some of the people he passed,
observing individuals in the gathering, one of the women before him closed
her eyes, turning her face away. Nicholas lifted a hand toward her, flicking
out a finger. He glanced to Najari to be sure he saw which one had been
picked.
Najari's gaze flicked from the woman up to Nicholas; he had noted the
selection.
A man back against the wall stood stiff, his eyes wide. Nicholas
flicked a finger at him. Another man twisted his lips in an odd manner.
Nicholas glanced down and saw that the man, in a state of wild fright, had
wet himself. Nicholas's finger flitted out again. Three selected. Nicholas
walked on.
A thin whine escaped the throat of a woman in the front, right before
him. He smiled at her. She peered up, trembling, unable to take her
wide-eyed gaze from him, from his red-rimmed black eyes, unable to halt the
puling sound escaping her throat. She had never seen one so human ... yet
not. Nicholas tapped her shoulder with a long-nailed finger. He would reward
her unspoken revulsion with service to a greater good. His.
Jagang had sought to create something ... unusual, for himself. A
bauble of flesh and blood. A magical trinket crafted from a wizard. A lapdog
... with teeth.
His Excellency had gotten what he wanted, and more. Oh, so much more.
Nicholas would enjoy seeing how the emperor liked having a puppet
without strings, a specially crafted creation with a mind of its own, and
talents to fulfill his wishes.
A man at the rear, against the wall, appeared to be somewhat
uninterested, as if impatient for the exhibition to be over so he could go
back to his own affairs. While none of these people could be said to think
of themselves as important individuals with consequential sway over any
meaningful aspects of life in their empire, a few occasionally exhibited
tendencies, even if inconsistent, toward self-interest. Nicholas flicked his
finger for the fifth time. The man would soon have reason to be highly
interested in the proceedings, and he would find that he was no better than
anyone else. He would be going nowhere--at least not in body.
Everyone stared in silence as Nicholas chuckled alone at his own joke.
His amusement ended. Nicholas tipped his head toward the door in a
single nod. The soldiers jumped into action.
"All right," Najari growled, "move along. Move! Get going. Out, out,
out!"
The feet of the crowd shuffled urgently through the door as ordered.
Some people cast worried glances back over their shoulders at the five
Najari had cut out of the flock. Those five were shoved back when they
sought to stay with the rest. A stiff finger to the chest backed them up as
effectively as would a club or a sword.
"Don't cause any trouble," Najari warned, "or you will be making
trouble for the others."
The five remaining huddled close to one another, rocking nervously side
to side like a covey of quail before a bird dog.
When the soldiers had driven the rest of the people out, Najari closed
the door and stood before it, hands clasped behind his back.
Nicholas returned to the windows, opening the shutters on the west
wall. The sun was down, leaving a red slash across the sky.
Soon they would be on the wing, on the hunt.
Nicholas would be with them.
Casting an arm back without needing to turn to look, he doused the
torch. The flickering light was a distraction during this cusp of time, the
transient twilight that was so fragile, so brief. He would need the light,
but, at the moment, he wanted only to see the sky, to see the glorious,
unbounded sky.
"Are we going to be able to leave soon?" one of the people asked in a
timid squeak.
Nicholas turned and peered at them. Najari's eyes revealed which one
had spoken. Nicholas followed his commander's gaze. It was one of the
men--the one who had been impatient to leave, of course.
"Go?" Nicholas asked as he swept in close to the man. "You wish to go?"
The man stood with his back bent, leaning away from Nicholas.
"Well, sir, I was only wondering when we would be going."
Nicholas stooped in even more, peering deeply into the man's eyes.
"Wonder in silence," he hissed.
Returning to the windows, Nicholas rested his hands on the sill, his
weight on his arms, as he breathed in deeply the gathering night while
taking in the sweep of crimson sky.
Soon, he would be there, be free.
Soon, he would soar as no one else but he could.
Impulsively, he sought them.
Eyes bulging with the effort, he cast his senses where none but his
could go.
"There!" he screeched, throwing his arm out, pointing a long black nail
at what none but he could see. "There! One has taken to wing."
Nicholas spun around, strips of cloth lifting, floating up. Panting
through a rush of fluttering excitement, he gazed at the eyes staring at
him. They could not know. They could not understand one such as he,
understand what he felt, what he needed. He hungered to be on the hunt, to
be with them, ever since he had imagined such a use for his ability.
He had reveled in the experience, dedicating himself to it as he
learned his new abilities. He had been off with those glorious creatures as
often as he could afford the time, ever since he had come here and
discovered them.
How ironic it now seemed that he had resisted. How odd that he once had
feared what those gruesome women, those Sisters of the Dark, had conspired
to do to him ... what they had done to him.
His duty, they had called it.
Their vile magic had cut like a red-hot blade through him. He had
thought his eyes might burst from his head from the pain that had seared
through him. Tied spread-eagled to stakes in the ground in the center of
their wicked circle, he had dreaded what they were going to do to him.
He had feared it.
Nicholas smiled.
Hated it, even.
He had been afraid because of the pain, the pain of what they were
doing to him, and the even greater pain of not knowing what more they
intended to do to him. His duty, they had called it, to a greater good. His
ability bore responsibilities, they had insisted.
He watched through glazed eyes as Najari bound the hands of the five
people behind each of their backs.
"Thank you, Najari," he said when the man had finished.
Najari approached. "The men will have them by now, Nicholas. I told
them to send enough men to insure that they would not escape." Najari
grinned at the prospect. "There's no need to worry. They should all be on
their way back to us."
Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "We will see. We will see."
He wanted to see it himself. With his own vision--even if his own
vision was through another's eyes.
Najari yawned on his way to the door. "See you tomorrow, then,
Nicholas."
Nicholas opened his mouth wide, mimicking the yawn, even though he
didn't yawn. It felt good to stretch his jaws wide. Sometimes he felt
trapped inside himself and he wanted out.
Nicholas closed the door behind Najari and bolted it. It was a
perfunctory act, done more to add to the aura of peril than out of
necessity. Even with their hands tied behind their backs, these people
could, together, probably overpower him--knock him down and kick in his
head, if nothing else. But for that, they would have to think, to decide
what they ought to do and why, to commit to act. Easier not to think. Easier
not to act. Easier to do as you are told.
Easier to die than to live.
Living took effort. Struggle. Pain.
Nicholas hated it.
"Hate to live, live to hate," he said to the silent, ghostly white
faces watching him.
Out the window the streaks of clouds had gone dark gray as the touch of
the sun passed beyond them and night crept in to embrace them. Soon, he
would be among them.
He turned back from the window, taking in the faces watching him. Soon,
they would all be out there, among them.
Nicholas seized one of the nameless men. Powered by muscles crafted of
the Sisters' dark art, he hoisted the man into the air. The man cried out in
surprise at being lifted so easily. He struggled hesitantly against muscle
he would not be able to resist were he even to put daring into it. These
people were immune to magic, or Nicholas would have used his power to easily
lift them aloft. Absent the necessary spark of the gift, they had to be
manhandled.
It made little difference to Nicholas. How they got to the stakes was
unimportant. What happened to them once there was all that mattered.
As the man in his arms cried out in terror, Nicholas carried him across
the room. The other people withdrew into a far corner. They always went to
the far corner, like chickens about to be dinner.
Nicholas, his arms around the man's chest, lifted him high in the air,
judging the distance and angle as he raced ahead.
The man's eyes went wide, his mouth did likewise. He gasped with the
shock, then grunted as Nicholas, hugging the man tight in his arms, drove
him down onto the stake.
The man's breath came in short sharp gasps as the sharpened stake
penetrated up through his insides. He went still in Nicholas's powerful
arms, fearing to move, fearing to believe what was happening to him, fearing
to know it was true ... trying to deny to himself that it could be true.
Nicholas straightened to his full height before the man. The man's back
was as straight and stiff as a board as he sat impaled on the sharpened
stake. His eyebrows pushed his sweat-beaded brow up in furrows as he writhed
in slow agony, his legs trying to touch the ground that was too far away.
Into that confusion of sensation, Nicholas reached out with his mind,
at the same time clawing his hands before the man with the effort as he slid
his own being, his own spirit, into the core of this living creature, slid
into this man's open mind, into the cavernous cracks between his abrupt and
disconnected thoughts, there to feel his agony and fright. There to take
control. Once he had slipped his own mind in there with this man, seeped
through his consciousness, Nicholas drew his essence out and into himself.
With a staggering fusion of destructive and creative power dealt by
those women that day, Nicholas had been born into a new being, part him, and
yet more. He had become what no man had ever been before--what others wished
to make of him, what others wished him to be.
What had been unleashed in him by those Sisters all linked in their
ability to harness powers they could never have touched alone and should
never have invoked together, they instilled in him. They engendered in him
powers few could ever have imagined: the power to slide into another living
person's thoughts, and withdraw their spirit.
He drew his closed fists back toward his own abdomen with the effort of
drawing with him the spirit of this man on the cusp of life and death, drew
onward the marrow of this man's soul. Nicholas felt the slick heat of this
other spirit slide into his, the hot rush of sensation at feeling himself
filled with another spirit.
Nicholas left the body there, impaled on the first stake, as he rushed
to the windows, his head spinning with the first intoxicating wave of
excitement at the journey only now just begun, at what was to come, at what
power he would control.
He opened his mouth wide again in a yawn that was not a yawn, but a
call carrying more than just his silent voice.
His eyes swam with wavering images. He gasped in the first scent of the
forests out beyond, where his intent had been cast.
He rushed back and seized a woman. She begged as she wept, begged to be
spared as he bore her to her stake.
"But this is nothing," he told her. "Nothing compared to what I have
endured. Oh, you cannot imagine what I have endured."
He had been staked naked to the ground, in the center of a circle of
those smug women. He had been nothing to them. He had not been a man, a
wizard. He had been nothing but the raw material, the flesh and blood
innervated by the gift, that they needed for what they wanted, that they
used in yet another of their trials, all to be twisted by their tinkering at
creation.
He had the ability, so duty required he sacrifice it.
Nicholas had been the first to live through their tests, not because
they took care--not because they cared--but because they had learned what
didn't work, and so avoided their past errors.
"Scream, my dear. Scream all you want. It will help you no more than it
helped me."
"Why!" she screamed. "Why!"
"Oh, but I must, if I am to have your spirit to soar on the wings of my
distant friends. You will go on a glorious journey, you and I."
"Please!" she wailed. "Dear Creator, no!"
"Oh, yes, dear Creator," he mocked. "Come and save her--like you came
and saved me."
Her wailing did her no good. His hadn't either. She had no idea how
immeasurably worse his agony had been than hers would be. Unlike her, he had
been condemned to live.
"Hate to live, live to hate," he murmured in a comforting whisper. "You
will have the glory and the reward that is death."
He drove her down onto the stake. He reckoned her not far enough onto
the stake, and shoved her down another six inches, until he judged it deep
enough within her, deep enough to produce the necessary pain and terror, but
not deep enough to lance anything inside that would kill her right off. She
thrashed, trying desperately, hands helpless behind her back, to somehow
remove herself.
He was only dimly aware of her cries, her worthless words. She thought
they might somehow make a difference.
Pain was his goal. Their complaints of it only confirmed that he was
achieving his goal.
Nicholas stood before the woman, hands clawed, as he slid his own
spirit through her sundered thoughts and into the core of her being. With
mental strength far superior to his physical strength, he pulled her back.
He gasped as he felt her spirit slide into his.
For now, he slipped those spirits out of tortured, dying bodies while
those spirits existed in the netherworld between the worldly form they knew
was lost to them, but still alive, and the world of the dead already calling
them in from beyond. Life could no longer hold them, but death could not yet
have them. In that time of spiritual transition, they were his, and he could
use those spirits for things only he could imagine.
And he had not yet really even begun to imagine.
Such ability as he possessed was not something that could be taught by
another--there was no other but he. He was still learning the extent of his
powers, the things he could do with the spirit of another. He had only
scratched the surface.
Emperor Jagang had sought to create something akin to himself, a dream
walker, a brother, of sorts. One who could enter another's mind. He had
gotten far more than he could have ever have imagined. Nicholas didn't
simply slide into another's thoughts, as Jagang did; he could slide into
their very soul, and draw their spirit back into himself.
The Sisters hadn't counted on that aberration of their tinkering with
his ability.
Rushing to the window, his mouth pulled open as wide as it would go in
a yawn that wasn't a yawn. The room swam behind him. It was only partly
there, now. Now, he was beginning to see other places. Glorious places. See
them with new vision, with spirits no longer bound to their paltry bodies.
He rushed to the third person, no longer aware even if they were man or
woman. Their soul was all that mattered--their spirit.
He drove them onto a stake with urgent effort, slid into them and drew
their spirit into his, shuddering with the power of it entering him.
He rushed to the window again, opening wide his mouth again, twisting
his head side to side again with the thrill of it, the slick, silken,
sliding ecstasy of it... the loss of physical orientation, the exaltation of
being above his corporeal existence, the former bounds of his mere worldly
form--carried aloft not simply with his own efforts, but by the spirits of
others that he had freed from their bodies.
What a glorious thing it was.
It was almost like the joy he imagined death would be.
He seized the fourth weeping person and with delirious expectation ran
with them across the room, to the stakes, to the fourth stake, and drove
them screaming onto it.
As he lurched back from them, he thrust himself into their wildly
racing, confused, swirling thoughts, and took what was there for the taking.
He took their spirit into himself.
When he controlled a person's spirit, he controlled their very
existence. He became life and death for them. He was their savior, their
destroyer.
He was in many ways like those spirits he took, trapped in a worldly
form, hating to live, to endure the pain and agony that was life, yet
fearing to die even while longing for the promise of its sweet embrace.
With four spirits swirling through him, Nicholas staggered to the fifth
person, cowering in the corner.
"Please!" the man wailed, trying to ward what he would not commit to
warding. "Please, don't!"
The thought occurred to Nicholas that the stakes were really a
hindrance; using them required him to carry people around like woolly sheep
to have their souls sheared. Yes, he was still learning what he could do and
how to control what he did, but to have to use the stakes was limiting. When
he thought about it, it was actually insulting that a wizard of his ability
would have to use so crude a device.
What he really wanted to do was to slide into another's spirit and take
it without any warning--without needing to bring people to the stakes.
When he was fully able to do that--to simply walk up to another, say
"Good day," and slide like the thrust of a dagger into the heart of their
spirit, there to draw it into his--then he would be invincible. When he was
able to do that, then no one could challenge him. No one would be able to
deny him anything.
As the man shrank down before him, Nicholas, before he fully realized
what it was he was doing, driven by an angry need, by hatred, thrust out his
hand as he thrust his own mind into this man, into the spaces between
thought.
The man stiffened, just as those on the stakes stiffened, when Nicholas
had impaled them with his ability.
He drew back his closed fist toward his middle as he drew in this man's
spirit. He gasped with the heat of it, with the silky slick feel of it
sliding into him.
They stared at each other, each in shock, each considering what this
meant for them.
The man slumped back against the wall, sliding down, in soundless,
silent, terrible empty agony.
Nicholas realized that he had just done what he had never done before.
He had just taken a soul by his will alone.
He had just freed himself to take what he wanted, when he wanted, where
he wanted.
Nicholas, his vision a blur, staggered to the window.
All five were his, now.
This time, as his mouth opened wide, a cry at last came forth, a cry of
the five spirits joining his as he drew them together into one force guided
by his will alone. Their worldly agony was a distant concern to them. Five
spirits gazed out of the windows along with him, five spirits now waiting to
soar out into the night, to where he chose to send them.
Those Sisters had not known what they unleashed that night. They could
not have known the power they fused into him, the ability they burned into
him.
They had achieved what none had achieved for thousands of years-- the
altering of a wizard into something more, honing him into a weapon of
specific intent. They had imbued him with power beyond that of anyone
living. They had given him dominion over the spirits of others.
Most had escaped, but he had killed five of them.
The five were enough. After he had slid into their souls and pulled
their spirits back into his that night, he had appropriated their Han, their
force of life, their power, for himself.
It was only fitting, as their Han was not natural to them, but was male
Han they had stolen from young wizards--a birthright they had sucked from
those to whom it belonged in order to give themselves abilities they had not
been born with, could not be born with. Yet more nameless people with
ability to be sacrificed to those who needed it, or simply wanted it.
Nicholas had taken it all back from their trembling bodies, pulled it
out of them as he had clawed their living insides open. They had been sorry
that they had done Jagang's bidding, that they had twisted him into
something Creation never intended.
Not only had they made him into a Slide, they had given up their Han to
him, and made him that much more powerful for it.
After each of those five women had died, the world had gone darker than
dark for an instant when the Keeper had come and taken them to his realm.
The Sisters had destroyed him that day, and they had created him.
He had a lifetime to explore and discover what he could do with his new
abilities.
And, to be sure, Jagang would grant him payment for that night. Jagang
would pay, but he would pay gladly, for Nicholas would give him something
none but Nicholas the Slide could give him.
Nicholas would be rewarded with things enough to repay him for what had
been done to him.... He hadn't decided, yet, what that reward would be, but
it would be worthy of him.
He would use his ability to hold sway over lives--important lives. He
no longer needed to cart people to the stakes. He knew how to take what he
wanted, now.
Now he knew how to slip into their minds at the time of his choosing
and take their souls.
He would trade those lives for what he would have in power, wealth,
splendor. It would have to be something appropriate....
He would be an emperor.
It would have to be more than this petty empire of sheep, though. He
would frolic in rule. He would have his every whim fulfilled, once he was
given dominion over... over something important. He hadn't decided just
what, yet. It was an important decision, what he would have as his reward.
No need to rush it. It would come to him.
He turned from the window, the five spirits swirling within his,
soaring through him.
It was time to use what he had pulled together.
Time to get down to business, if he was to have what he wanted.
He would get closer, this time. He was frustrated from not being
closer, from not seeing better. It was dark, now. He would get closer, this
time, under cover of the darkness.
Nicholas took the broad bowl from the table and placed it on the floor
before the five who still owned the spirits within him. They writhed in
otherworldly agony, even the man not on a stake, an agony of both body and
soul.
Nicholas sat cross-legged on the floor before the bowl. Hands on his
knees, he threw his head back, eyes closed, as he gathered the power within,
the power created by those wicked women, those wonderful wicked women.
They had considered him a pathetic wizard of little worth except as
flesh and blood and gift to toy with--a sacrifice to a greater need.
When he had time, he would go after the rest of them.
With a more immediate task at hand, Nicholas dismissed those Sisters
from his mind.
Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, he
would again go with the spirits he cast.
Tonight, he would not merely watch through other eyes. Tonight, his
spirit would travel to them.
Nicholas opened his mouth as wide as it would go, his head rocking from
side to side. The joined spirits within released a part of themselves into
the bowl, whirling in a silken, silvery swirl lit with the soft glow of
their link to the life behind him, placekeepers for their journey, a stitch
in the world holding the knot in the thread of their travels.
His spirit, too, let slip a small portion to remain with his body, to
drift in the bowl with the others.
Fragments of the five spirits revolved with the fragment of his, their
light of life glowing softly in this safe place as he prepared to journey.
He cast his own spirit away, then, leaving behind the husk of a body sitting
on the floor behind him as he fled out into the dark sky, borne on the wings
of his invested power.
No wizard before had ever been able to do as he, to leave his body and
have his spirit soar to where his mind would send him. He raced through the
night, fast as thought, to find what he hunted.
He felt the rush of air flowing over feathers. As quick as that, he had
raced away through the night and was with them, pulling the five spirits
along with him.
He summoned the dark forms into a circle with him, and, as they
gathered around, cast the five spirits into them. His mouth was still open
in a yawn that was not a yawn that back in a room somewhere distant let
forth a cry to match the five.
As they circled, he felt the rush of air beneath their wings, felt
their feathers working the wind to direct them as effortlessly as his own
thought directed not only his spirit but the other five as well.
He sent those five racing through the night, to the place where he had
sent the men. They raced over hills, turning to scan the open country, to
look out over the barren land. The cloak of darkness felt cool, encasing him
in obscure black night, obscure black feathers.
He caught the scent of carrion, sharp, cloying, tantalizing, as the
five spiraled down toward the ground. Through their eyes that saw in the
darkness Nicholas saw then the scene below, a place littered with the dead.
Others of their kind had gathered to feed in a frenzy of ripping and
gorging.
No. This was wrong. He didn't see them.
He had to find them.
He willed his charges up from the gory feast, to search. Nicholas felt
a pang of urgency. This was his future that had slipped away from him--his
treasure slipping through his grasp. He had to find them. Had to.
He spurred his charges onward.
This way, that way, over there. Look, look, look. Find them, find them.
Look. Must find them. Look.
This was not supposed to be. There had been enough men. No one could
escape that many experienced men. Not when they came by stealth and attacked
with surprise. They had been selected for their talents. They knew their
business.
Their bodies lay sprawled all about. Beak and claw ripped at them.
Screeches of excitement. Hunger.
No. Must find them.
Up, up, up. Find them. He had to find them.
He had suffered the agony of a new birth in those dark woods, those
terrible woods, with those terrible women. He would have his reward. He
would not be denied. Not now. Not after all that.
Find them. Look, look, look. Find them.
On powerful wings, he soared into the night. With eyes that saw in the
dark, he searched. With creatures that could catch the scent of prey at
great distance, he tried for a whiff of them.
Through the night they went, hunting. Hunting.
There, there he saw their wagon. He recognized their wagon. Their big
horses. He had seen it before--seen them with it before. His minions circled
in close on nearly silent wings, dropping in closer to see what Nicholas
sought.
Not there. They weren't there. A trick. It had to be a trick. A
diversion. Not there. They had sent the wagon away to trick him, to send him
off their trail.
With wings powered by anger, he soared up, up, up to search the
countryside. Hunt, hunt. Find them. He flew with his five in an ever wider
pattern to search the ground beneath the night. They flew on, searching,
searching. His hunger was their hunger. Hunt for them. Hunt.
The wings grew weary as he drove them onward. He had to find them. He
would not allow rest. Not allow failure. He hunted in expanding swaths,
searching, hunting, hunting.
There, among the trees, he saw movement.
It was only just dark. They wouldn't see their pursuers--not in the
dark--but he could see them. He forced the five down, circling, circling,
forced them in close. He would not fail this time to see them, to get close
enough. Circling, holding him there, circling, watching, circling, watching,
seeing them there.
It was her! The Mother Confessor! He saw others. The one with red hair
and her small four-legged friend. Others, too. He must be there, too. Had to
be there, too. He would be there, too, as the small group moved west.
West. They moved west. They had traveled to the west of where he had
seen them last.
Nicholas laughed. They were coming west. The captors sent for them all
lay dead, but here they came anyway. They were coming west.
Toward where he waited.
He would have them.
He would have Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.
Jagang would have them.
It came to him, then--his reward. What he would have in return for the
prizes he would deliver.
D'Hara.
He would have the rule of D'Hara in return for these two paltry people.
Jagang would reward him with the rule of D'Hara, if he wanted those two. He
would not dare deny Nicholas the Slide what he wanted. Not when he had what
Jagang wanted most, more than any other prize. Jagang would pay any price
for these two.
Pain. A scream. Shock, terror, confusion raged through him. He felt the
wind, the wind that carried him so effortlessly, now ripping at him like
fists snatching at feathers as he tumbled in helpless pain.
One of the five falling at blinding speed smacked the ground.
Nicholas screamed. One of the five spirits had been lost with its host.
Back somewhere distant, in some far-off room with wooden walls and shutters
and bloody stakes, back, back, back in another place he had almost forgotten
existed, back, back, back far away, a spirit was ripped from his control.
One of the five back there had died at the same instant the race had
crashed to the ground.
Scream of hot pain. Another tumbled out of control. Another spirit
escaped his grasp into the waiting arms of death.
Nicholas struggled to see in the confusion, forcing the remaining three
to hold his vision in place so he could see. Hunt, hunt, hunt. Where was he?
Where was he? Where? He saw the others. Where was Lord Rahl?
A third scream.
Where was he? Nicholas fought to hold his vision despite the hot agony,
the bewildering plummet.
Pain ripped through a fourth.
Before he could gather his senses, hold them together, force them with
the power of his will to do his bidding, two more spirits were yanked away
into the void of the underworld.
Where was he?
Talons at the ready, Nicholas searched.
There! There!
With violent effort, he forced the race over into a dive. There he was!
There he was! Up high. Higher than the rest. Somehow up high. Up on a ledge
of rock above the rest. He wasn't down there with them. He was up high.
Dive for him. Dive down for him.
There he was, bow drawn.
Ripping pain tore through the last race. The ground rushed up at him.
Nicholas cried out. He tried frantically to stop the spinning. He felt the
race slam into the rock at frightening speed. But only for an instant.
With a gasp, Nicholas drew a desperate breath. His head spun with the
burning torture of the abrupt return, an uncontrolled return not of his
doing.
He blinked, his mouth open wide in an attempt to let out a cry, but no
sound came. His eyes bulged with the effort, but no cry came. He was back.
Whether or not he wanted to be, he was back.
He looked around at the room. He was back, that was the reason no cry
came. No screech of a race joined his own. They were dead. All five.
Nicholas turned to the four impaled on stakes behind him. All four were
slumped. The fifth man lay slouched in the far corner. All five limp and
still. All five dead. Their spirits gone.
The room was as silent as a crypt. The bowl before him glowed only with
the fragment of his own spirit. He drew it back in.
He sat in the stillness for a long time, waiting for his head to stop
spinning. It had been a shock to be in a creature as it was killed--to have
a spirit of a person in him as they died. As five of them died. It had been
a surprise.
Lord Rahl was a surprising man. Nicholas hadn't thought, back that
first time, that he would be able to get all five. He had thought it was
luck. A second time was not luck. Lord Rahl was a surprising man.
Nicholas could cast his spirit out again if he wanted, seek out new
eyes, but his head hurt and he didn't feel up to it; besides, it didn't
matter. Lord Rahl was coming west. He was coming to the great empire of
Bandakar.
Nicholas owned Bandakar.
The people here revered him.
Nicholas smiled. Lord Rahl was coming. He would be surprised at the
kind of man he found when he arrived. Lord Rahl probably thought he knew all
manner of men.
He did not know Nicholas the Slide.
Nicholas the Slide, who would be emperor of D'Hara when he gave Jagang
the prizes he sought most: the dead body of Lord Rahl, and the living body
of the Mother Confessor.
Jagang would have them both for himself.
And in return, Nicholas would have their empire.
Ann heard the distant echo of footsteps coming down the long, empty,
dark corridor outside the far door to her forgotten vault under the People's
Palace, the seat of power in D'Hara. She was no longer sure if it was day or
night. She'd lost track of time as she sat in the silent darkness. She saved
the lamp for times when they brought food, or the times she wrote to Verna
in the journey book. Or the times she felt so alone that she needed the
company of a small flame, if nothing else.
In this place, within this spell of a palace for those born Rahl, her
power was so diminished that it was all she could do to light that lamp.
She feared to use the little lamp too often and run out of oil; she
didn't know if they would give her more. She didn't want to run out and only
then find they would give her no more. She didn't want not to have at least
the possibility of that small flame, that small gift of light.
In the dark she could do nothing but consider her life and all she had
worked so hard to accomplish. For centuries she had led the Sisters of the
Light in their effort to see the Creator's light triumph in the world, and
see the Keeper of the underworld kept where he belonged, in his own realm,
the world of the dead. For centuries she had waited in dread of the time
that prophecy said was now upon them.
For five hundred years she had waited for the birth of the one who had
the chance to succeed in leading them in the struggle to see the Creator's
gift, magic, survive against those who would cast that light out of the
world. For five hundred years she had worked to insure that he would have a
chance to do what he must if he was to have a chance to stop the forces that
would extinguish magic.
Prophecy said that only Richard had the chance to preserve their cause,
to keep the enemy from succeeding in casting a gray pall over mankind, the
only one with a chance to prevent the gift from dying out. Prophecy did not
say that he would prevail; prophecy said only that Richard was the only one
to have a chance to bring them victory. Without Richard, all hope was
lost--that much was sure. For this reason, Ann had been devoted to him long
before he was born, before he rose up to become their leader.
Kahlan saw all of Ann's efforts as meddling, as tinkering with the
lives of others. Kahlan believed that Ann's efforts were in fact the cause
of the very thing she feared most. Ann hated that she sometimes thought that
maybe Kahlan was right. Maybe it was meant to be that Richard would be born
and by his free will alone would choose to do those things that would lead
them to victory in their battle to keep the gift among men. Zedd certainly
believed that it was only by Richard's mind, by his free will, but his
conscious intent, that he could lead them.
Maybe it was true, and Ann, in trying to direct those things that could
not be and should not be directed, had brought them all to the brink of
ruin.
The footsteps were coming closer. Maybe it was time to eat and they
were bringing dinner. She wasn't hungry.
When they brought her food, they put it on the end of a long pole and
then threaded that pole through the little opening in the outer door, all
the way across the outer shielded room, through the opening in the second,
inner door, and finally in to Ann. Nathan would risk no chance for escape by
having her guards have to open her cell door merely to give her food.
They passed in a variety of breads, meats, and vegetables along with
waterskins. Although the food was good, she found no satisfaction in it.
Even the finest fare could never be satisfying eaten in a dungeon.
At times, as Prelate, she had felt as if she were a prisoner of her
post. She had rarely gone to the dining hall where the Sisters of the Light
had eaten--especially in the later years. It put everyone on edge having the
Prelate among them at dinner. Besides, done too often it took the edge off
their anxiety, their discomposure, around authority.
Ann believed that a certain distance, a certain worried respect, was
necessary in order to maintain discipline. In a place that had been spelled
so that time slowed for those living there, it was important to maintain
discipline. Ann appeared to be in her seventies, but with her aging process
slowed dramatically while living under the spell that had covered the Palace
of the Prophets, she had lived close to a thousand years.
Of course, a lot of good her discipline had done her. Under her watch
as Prelate the Sisters of the Dark had infested her flock. There were
hundreds of Sisters, and there was no telling just how many of them had
taken dark oaths to the Keeper. The lure of his promises were obviously
effective. Such promises were an illusion, but try to tell that to one so
pledged. Immortality was seductive to women who watched everyone they knew
outside the palace grow old and die while they remained young.
Sisters who had children saw those children sent out of the palace to
be raised where they could have a normal life, saw those children grow old
and die, saw their grandchildren grow old and die. To a woman who saw such
things, saw the constant withering and death of those she knew while she
herself all the time seemed to remain young, attractive, and desirable, the
offer of immortality grew increasingly tempting when her own petals began to
wilt.
Growing old was a final stage, the end of a life. Growing old in the
Palace of the Prophets was a very long ordeal. Ann had been old for
centuries. Being young for a very long time was a wonderful experience, but
being old for a very long time was not--at least it was not for some. For
Ann, it was life itself that was wonderful, not so much her age, and all she
had learned. But not everyone felt that way.
Now that the palace had been destroyed, they would all age at the same
rate as everyone else. What had only a short time ago been a future of maybe
another hundred years of life for Ann was suddenly perhaps no more than a
blink of a decade--certainly not much more.
But she doubted she would live all that long in such a dank hole, away
from light and life.
Somehow, it didn't seem as if she and Nathan were close to a thousand
years old. She didn't know what it felt like to age at the normal rate
outside the spell, but she believed she felt little different than those
outside the palace felt as they aged. She believed that the spell that
slowed their aging also altered their perception of time--to a degree,
anyway.
The footsteps were getting closer. Ann wasn't looking forward to
another meal in this place. She was beginning to wish they would let her
starve and get it over with. Let her die.
What good had her life been? When she really thought about it, what
good had she really accomplished? The Creator knew how she tried to guide
Richard in what needed to be done, but in the end it seemed that it was
Richard's choice to act as he did, in most cases against what she thought
needed to be done, that turned out to be correct. Had she not tried to guide
events, bring him to the Palace of the Prophets in the Old World, maybe
nothing would have changed and that would have been the way he was to save
them all--by not having to act and letting Jagang and the Imperial Order
eventually wither and die in the Old World, unable to spread their virulent
beliefs beyond. Maybe she'd brought it all to ruin with her efforts alone.
She heard the door at the end of the passageway to her cell scrape
open. She decided that she wouldn't eat. She wouldn't eat again until Nathan
came to speak with her, as she had requested.
Sometimes, with the food, they sent in wine. Nathan sent it in to vex
her, she was sure of that. From his confinement in the Palace of the
Prophets, Nathan had sometimes requested wine. Ann always saw the report
when such a request was made; she declined every such request.
Wizards were dangerous enough, prophets--who were wizards with the
talent of prophecy--were potentially vastly more dangerous, and drunken
prophets were the most dangerous of all. Prophecy given out willy-nilly was
an invitation to calamity. Even simple prophecy escaping the confines of the
stone walls of the Palace of the Prophets had started wars.
Nathan had sometimes requested the company of women. Ann hated those
requests the most, because she sometimes granted them. She felt she had to.
Nathan had little of life, confined as he was to his apartments, his only
real crime being the nature of his birth, his abilities. The palace could
easily afford the price of a woman to sometimes visit him.
He made a mockery of that, often enough--giving out prophecy that sent
the woman fleeing before they could speak with her, before they could
silence her.
Those without the proper training were not meant to see prophecy.
Prophecy was easily misinterpreted by those without an understanding of its
intricacies. To divulge prophecy to the uninitiated was like casting fire
into dry grass.
Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened.
At the thought of the prophet being loose, Ann's stomach tightened into
a knot. Even so, she had sometimes secretly taken Nathan out herself, to go
on important journeys with her--mostly journeys having to do with guiding
some aspect of Richard's life, or, more accurately, trying to insure that
Richard would be born and have a life. Besides being trouble on two feet,
Nathan was also a remarkable prophet who did have a sincere interest in
seeing their side triumph. After all, he saw in prophecy the alternative,
and when Nathan saw prophecy, he saw it in all its terrible truth.
Nathan always wore a Rada'Han--a collar--that enabled her, or any
Sister, to control him, so taking him on those journeys wasn't actually
putting the world at risk of the man. He had to do as she said, go where she
said. Whenever she had taken him out on a mission with her, he was not
really free, since he wore a Rada'Han and she could thus control him.
Now he was without a Rada'Han. He was truly free.
Ann didn't want any supper. She resolved to turn it away when they
passed the pole in to her. Let Nathan fret that she might refuse food
altogether and die while under his fickle control. Ann folded her arms.
Let him have that on his conscience. That would bring the man down to
see her.
Ann heard the footsteps come to a halt outside the far door. Muffled
voices drifted in to her. Had she ready access to her Han, she would have
been able to concentrate her hearing toward those voices and easily hear
their words. She sighed. Even that ability was useless to her here, in this
place, under the power invoked by the spell form of the layout of the
palace. It would hardly make sense to create such elaborate plans to curtail
another's magic and allow them to hear secrets whispered inside the walls.
The outer door squealed in protest as it was pulled open. This was new.
No one had opened the outer door since the day they shut her in the place.
Ann rushed to the door to her small room, to the faint square of light
that was the opening in the iron door. She grabbed hold of the bars and
pulled her face up close, trying to see who was out there, what they were
doing.
Light blinded her. She staggered back a few steps, rubbing her eyes.
She was so used to the dark that the harsh lantern light felt as if it had
burned her vision with blazing light.
Ann backed away from the door when she heard a key clattering in the
lock. The bolt threw back with a reverberating clang. The door grated open.
Cool air, fresher than the stale air she was used to breathing, poured in.
Yellow light flooded around the room as the lantern was thrust into the room
at the end of an arm encased in red leather. Mord-Sith.
Ann squinted in the harsh glare as the Mord-Sith stepped over the sill
and ducked in through the doorway into the room. Unaccustomed to the lantern
light, Ann at first could only discern the red leather outfit and the blond
braid. She didn't like to contemplate why one of the Lord Rahl's elite corps
of torturers would be coming down to the dungeon to see her. She knew
Richard. She could not imagine that he would allow such a practice to
continue. But Richard wasn't here. Nathan seemed to be in charge.
Squinting, Ann at last realized that it was the woman she had seen
before: Nyda.
Nyda, appraising Ann with a cool gaze, said nothing as she stepped to
the side. Another person was following her in. A long leg wearing brown
trousers stepped over the sill, followed by a bent torso folding through the
opening. Rising up to full height, Ann saw with sudden surprise who it was.
"Ann!" Nathan held his arms open wide, as if expecting a hug. "How are
you? Nyda gave me your message. They are treating you well, I trust?"
Ann stood her ground and scowled at the grinning face. "I'm still
alive, no thanks to you, Nathan."
She of course remembered how tall Nathan was, how broad were his
shoulders. Now, standing before her, the top of his full head of long gray
hair nearly touching the stone chisel marks in the ceiling, he looked even
taller than she remembered. His shoulders, filling up so much of the small
room, looked even broader. He wore high boots over his trousers and a
ruffled white shirt beneath an open vest. An elegant green velvet cape was
attached at his right shoulder. At his left hip a sword in an elegant
scabbard glimmered in the lamplight.
His face, his handsome face, so expressive, so unlike any other, made
Ann's heart feel buoyant.
Nathan grinned as no one but a Rahl could grin, a grin like joy and
hunger and power all balled together. He looked like he needed to sweep a
damsel into his powerful arms and kiss her without her permission.
He waved a hand casually around at her accommodations. "But you are
safe in here, my dear. No one can harm you while under our care. No one can
bother you. You have fine food--even wine now and again. What more could you
want?"
Fists at her side, Ann stormed forward at a pace that brought the
Mord-Sith's Agiel up into her fist, even though she stayed where she was.
Nathan held his ground, held his smile, as he watched her come.
"What more could I want!" Ann screamed. "What more could I want? I want
to be let out! That's what more I could want!"
Nathan's small, knowing smile cut her to her core. "Indeed," he said, a
single word of quiet indictment.
Standing in the stony silence of the dungeon, she could only stare up
at him, unable to bring forth an argument that he would not throw back at
her.
Ann turned a glare on the Mord-Sith. "What message did you give him?"
"Nyda said that you wanted to see me," Nathan answered in her place. He
spread his arms. "Here I am, as requested. What is it you wanted to see me
about, my dear?"
"Don't patronize me, Nathan. You know very well what I wanted to see
you about. You know why I'm here, in D'Hara--why I've come to the People's
Palace."
Nathan clasped his hands behind his back. His smile had finally lost
its usefulness.
"Nyda," he said, turning to the woman, "would you leave us alone for
now. There's a good girl."
Nyda appraised Ann with a brief glance. No more was needed; Ann was no
threat to Nathan. He was a wizard--no doubt he had told her that he was the
greatest wizard of all time--and was within the ancestral home of the House
of Rahl. He had no need to fear this one old sorceress--not anymore, anyway.
Nyda gave Nathan a if-you-need-me-I'll-be-right-outside kind of look
before contorting her perfect limbs through the doorway with fluid grace,
the way a cat went effortlessly through a hedge.
Nathan stood in the center of the cell, hands still clasped behind his
upright back, waiting for Ann to say something.
Ann went to her pack, sitting on the far end of the stone bench that
had been her bed, her table, her chair. She flipped back the flap and
reached inside, feeling around. Her fingers found the cold metal of the
object she sought. Ann drew it out and stood over it, her shadow hiding it.
Finally, she turned. "Nathan, I have something for you."
She lifted out a Rada'Han she had intended to put around his neck.
Right then, she didn't quite know how she had thought she could accomplish
such a feat. She would have, though, had she put her mind to it; she was
Annalina Aldurren, Prelate of the Sisters of the Light. Or, at least, she
once had been. She had given that job to Verna before feigning her and
Nathan's death.
"You want me to put that collar around my neck?" Nathan asked in a calm
voice. "That's what you expect?"
Ann shook her head. "No, Nathan. I want to give this to you. I've been
doing a lot of thinking while I've been down here. Thinking about how I'd
probably never leave my place of confinement."
"What a coincidence," Nathan said. "I used to spend a great deal of
time thinking that very same thought."
"Yes," Ann said, nodding. "I expect you did." She handed him the
Rada'Han. "Here. Take this. I never want to see one of these again.
While I did what I thought best, I hated every minute of it, Nathan. I
hated to do it to you, especially. I've come to think that my life has been
a misguided mess. I'm sorry I ever put you behind those shields and kept you
a prisoner. If I could live my life over again, I'd not do it the same way.
"I expect no leniency; I showed you none."
"No," Nathan said. "You didn't."
His azure eyes seemed to be looking right into her. He had a way of
doing that. Richard had inherited that same penetrating Rahl gaze.
"So, you are sorry you kept me a prisoner all my life. Do you know why
it was wrong, Ann? Are you even aware of the irony?"
Almost against her better judgment, she heard herself ask, "What
irony?"
"Well," he said as he shrugged, "what is it we're fighting for?"
"Nathan, you know very well what we're fighting for."
"Yes, I do. But do you? Tell me, then, what it is we're struggling to
protect, to preserve, to insure remains alive?"
"The Creator's gift of magic, of course. We fight to see that it
continues to exist in the world. We struggle for those who are born with it
to live, for them to learn to use their ability to its full extent. We fight
for each to have and to celebrate their unique ability."
"I think that's kind of ironic, don't you? The very thing you think is
worth fighting for is what you feared. The Imperial Order proclaims that
it's not in the best interest of mankind for a gifted individual to possess
magic, so that unique ability must be stripped away from them. They claim
that, since all do not have this ability in identical and equal measure,
it's dangerous for some to have it--that man must cast aside the belief that
a man's life is his own to live. That those who were born with magic must
therefore be expunged from the world in order to make the world a better
place for those who don't have such ability.
"And yet, you worked under that very premise, acted on those same
wicked beliefs. You locked me away because of my ability. You saw what I am
able to do, that others cannot do, as an evil birthright that could not be
allowed to be among mankind.
"And yet, you work to preserve that very thing which you fear in me--my
unique ability--in others. You work to allow everyone born with magic to
have the inalienable right to their own life, to be the best of what they
can be with their own ability .. . and yet you locked me away to deny me
that very same right."
"Just because I want the Creator's wolves to run free to hunt, as they
were intended, doesn't mean that I want to be their dinner."
Nathan leaned toward her. "I am not a wolf. I am a human being. You
tried, convicted, and sentenced me to life in your prison for being who I
was born, for what you feared I might do, simply because I had the ability.
You then soothed your own inner conflict by making that prison plush in an
attempt to convince yourself that you were kind-- all the while professing
to believe that we must fight to allow future people to be who they are.
"You qualified your prison as right because it was lavish, in order to
mask from yourself the nature of what you were advocating. Look around,
Ann." He swept his arm out at the stone. "This is what you were advocating
for those you decided did not have the right to their own life. You decided
the same as the Order, based on an ability you did not like. You decided
that some, because of their greater potential, must be sacrificed to the
good of those less than they. No matter how you decorated your dungeon, this
is what it looks like from the inside."
Ann gathered her thoughts, as well as her voice, before she spoke. "I
thought I had come to understand something like that while I sat all alone
down here, but I realize now that I hadn't, really. All those years I felt
bad for locking you away, but I never really examined my rationale for doing
so.
"You're right, Nathan. I believed you held the potential for great
harm. I should have helped you to understand what was right so you could act
rationally, rather than expect the worst from you and lock you away. I'm
sorry, Nathan."
He put his hands on his hips. "Do you really mean it, Ann?"
She nodded, unable to look up at him, as her eyes filled with tears.
She always expected honesty from everyone else, but she had not been honest
with herself. "Yes, Nathan, I really do."
Confession over, she went to her bench and slumped down. "Thank you for
coming, Nathan. I'll not trouble you to come down here again. I will take my
just punishment without complaint. If you don't mind,
I think I'd like to be alone right now to pray and consider the weight
on my heart."
"You can do that later. Now get up off your bottom, on your feet, and
pick up your things. We have matters to attend to and we have to get going."
Ann looked up with a frown. "What?"
"We have important things to do. Come on, woman. We're wasting time. We
need to get going. We're on the same side in this struggle, Ann. We need to
act like it and work together toward preserving our causes." He leaned down
toward her. "Unless you've decided to retire to sit around the rest of your
life. If not, then let's be on our way. We have trouble."
Ann hopped down from the stone bench. "Trouble? What sort of trouble."
"Prophecy trouble."
"Prophecy? There is trouble with a prophecy? What trouble? What
prophecy?"
Fists on his nips, Nathan fixed her with a scowl. "I can't tell you
about such things. Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened."
Ann pursed her lips, about to launch into scolding him up one side and
down the other, when she caught the smile working at the edges of his mouth.
It caught her up in a smile of her own.
"What's happened?" she asked in the tone of voice friends used when
they had decided that past wrongs were recognized and matters now set on a
correct path.
"Ann, you'll not believe it when I tell you," Nathan complained. "It's
that boy, again."
"Richard?"
"What other boy do you know who can get in the kind of trouble only
Richard can get into."
"Well, I no longer think of Richard as a boy."
Nathan sighed. "I suppose not, but it's hard when you're my age to
think of one so young as a man."
"He's a man," Ann assured him.
"Yes, I guess he is." Nathan grinned. "And, he's a Rahl."
"What sort of trouble has Richard gotten himself into this time?"
Nathan's good humor evaporated. "He's walked off the edge of prophecy."
Ann screwed up her face. "What are you talking about? What's he done?"
"I'm telling you, Ann, that boy has walked right off the edge of
prophecy itself--walked right off into a place in prophecy where prophecy
itself doesn't exist."
Ann recognized that Nathan was sincerely troubled, but he was making no
sense. In part, that was why some people were afraid of him. He often gave
people the impression he was talking gibberish when he was talking about
things that no one but he could even understand. Sometimes no one but a
prophet could truly understand completely what he grasped. With his eyes,
the eyes of a prophet, he could see things that no one else could.
She had spent a lifetime working with prophecy, though, and so she
could understand, perhaps better than most, at least some of his mind, some
of what he could grasp.
"How can you know of such a prophecy, Nathan, if it doesn't exist? I
don't understand. Explain it to me."
"There are libraries here, at the People's Palace, that contain some
valuable books of prophecy that I've never had a chance to see before. While
I had reason to suspect that such prophecies might exist, I was never
certain they actually did, or what they might say. I've been studying them
since I've been here and I've come across links to other known prophecy we
had down in the vaults at the Palace of the Prophets. These prophecies,
here, fill in some important gaps in those we already know about.
"Most importantly, I found an altogether new branch of prophecy I've
never seen before that explains why and how I've been blind to some of
what's been going on. From studying the forks and inversions off of this
branch, I've discovered that Richard has taken a series of links that follow
down a particular pathway of prophecy that leads to oblivion, to something
that, as far as I can tell, doesn't even exist."
One hand on a hip, the other tracing invisible lines in the air, Nathan
paced the small room as he talked. "This new link alludes to things I've
never seen before, branches that I've always known must be there, but were
missing. These branches are exceedingly dangerous prophecies that have been
kept here, in secret. I can see why. Even I, had I seen them years ago,
might have misinterpreted them. These new branches refer to voids of some
sort. Since they are voids, their nature can't be known; such a
contradiction can't exist.
"Richard has gone into this area of void, where prophecy can't see him,
can't help him, and worse, can't help us. But more than not seeing him with
prophecy, it's as if where he is and what he is doing do not exist.
"Richard is dealing in something that is capable of ending everything
we know."
Ann knew that Nathan would not exaggerate about something of this
nature. While she was in the dark about precisely what he was talking about,
the essence of it gave her the cold sweats.
"What can we do about it?"
Nathan threw up his arms. "We have to go in there and get him. We have
to bring him back into the world that exists."
"You mean, the world that prophecy says exists."
Nathan's scowl was back. "That's what I said, isn't it? We have to
somehow get him back on the thread of prophecy where he shows up."
Ann cleared her throat. "Or?"
Nathan snatched up the lamp, then her pack. "Or, he will cease to be
part of viable lines of prophecy, never to be involved with matters of this
world again."
"You mean, if we don't get him back from wherever his is, he will die?"
Nathan gave her a curious look. "Have I been talking to the walls? Of
course he will die! If that boy isn't in prophecy, if he breaks all the
links to prophecy where he plays a role, then he voids all those lines of
prophecy where he exists. If he does that, then they become false prophecy
and those branches with word of him will never come to pass. None of the
other links contain any reference to him--because in the origin of those
links, he dies, first."
"And what happens on those links that don't contain him?"
Nathan took up her hand as he pulled her toward the door. "On those
links, a shadow falls over everyone. Everyone who lives, anyway. It will be
a very long and very dark age."
"Wait," Ann said, pulling him to a halt.
She returned to the stone bench and placed the Rada'Han in the center.
"I don't have the power to destroy this. I think maybe it should be locked
away."
Nathan nodded his approval. "We will lock the doors and instruct the
guards that it is to remain in here, behind the shields, for all time."
Ann held a warning finger up before him. "Don't get the idea that just
because you're not wearing a collar I will tolerate misbehavior."
Nathan's grin returned. He didn't come right out and agree. Before he
went through the door, he turned back to her.
"By the way, have you been talking to Verna through your journey book?"
"Yes, a little. She's with the army and pretty busy, right now. They're
defending the passes into D'Hara. Jagang has begun his siege."
"Well, from what I've been able to gather from military commanders
here, at the palace, the passes are formidable and will hold for a while, at
least." He leaned toward her. "You have to send a message to her, though.
Tell her that when an empty wagon rolls into their line, to let it through."
Ann made a face. "What does that mean?"
"Prophecy is not meant for the unenlightened. Just tell her."
"All right," Ann said with breathless difficulty as Nathan pulled her
through the tight doorway. "But I'd best not tell her you're the one who
said it, or she will likely ignore the advice. She thinks you're daft, you
know."
"She just never got a chance to come to know me very well, that's all."
He glanced back. "What with me being unjustly locked away, and all."
Ann wanted to say that perhaps Verna knew Nathan all too well, but
decided better of it right then. As Nathan started to turn toward the outer
door, Ann snatched his sleeve.
"Nathan, what else about this prophecy you found aren't you telling me?
This prophecy where Richard disappears into oblivion."
She knew Nathan well enough to know by his agitation that he hadn't
told her everything, that he thought he was being gallant by sparing her
worry. With a sober expression, he gazed into her eyes for a time before he
finally spoke.
"There is a Slide on that fork of prophecy."
Ann frowned as she turned her eyes up in thought. "A Slide. A Slide,"
she muttered to herself, trying to recall the name. It sounded familiar. "A
Slide . . ." She snapped her fingers. "A Slide." Her eyes went wide. "Dear
Creator."
"I don't think the Creator had anything to do with this."
Ann impatiently waved in protest. "That can't be. There has to be
something wrong with this new prophecy you found. It has to be defective.
Slides were created in the great war. There couldn't be a Slide on this link
of prophecy--don't you see? The prophecy must be out of phase and long ago
expired." Ann chewed her lower lip as her mind raced.
"It isn't out of phase. Don't you think that was my first thought, too?
You think me an amateur at this? I worked through the chronology a hundred
times. I ran every chart and calculation I ever learned--even some I
invented for the task. They all came out with the same root. Every link came
out in order. The prophecy is in phase, chronology, and all its aspects are
aligned."
"Then it's a false link," Ann insisted. "Slides were conjured
creatures. They were sterile. They couldn't reproduce."
"I'm telling you," Nathan growled, "there is a Slide on this fork with
Richard and it's a viable prophetic link."
"They couldn't have survived to be here." Ann was sure of what she was
saying. Nathan knew more about prophecy than she, there was no doubt of
that, but this was one area where she knew exactly what she was talking
about--this was her area of expertise. "Slides weren't able to beget
children."
He was giving her one of those looks she didn't like. "I'm telling you,
a Slide walks the world again."
Ann tsked. "Nathan, soul stealers can't reproduce."
"The prophecy says he wasn't born, but born again a Slide."
Ann's flesh began to tingle. She stared at him a time before finding
her voice. "For three thousand years there have been no wizards born with
both sides of the gift but Richard. There is no way anyone ..."
Ann paused. He was watching her, watching her finally realize what had
to be. "Dear Creator," she whispered.
"I told you, the Creator had nothing to do with this. The Sisters of
the Dark mothered him."
Shaken to her core, Ann could think of nothing to say.
There was no worse news she could have heard.
There was no defense against a Slide.
Every soul was naked to a Slide's attack.
Outside the second door, Nyda waited in the hall, her face as grim as
ever, but not as grim as Ann's. The hall was dark but for the dim light
coming from the still flames of a few candles. No breath of wind ever made
it this deep into the palace. The only color among the dark rock soaking up
that small bit of light was the blood red of Nyda's red leather.
Being pulled along by the hand, feeling a jumble of emotions, Ann
leaned toward the woman and vented a pent-up fiery scowl. "You told him what
I said to tell him, didn't you?"
"Of course," Nyda answered as she fell into step behind the two of
them.
Turning halfway around, Ann shook a finger at the Mord-Sith. "I'll make
you sorry you told him."
Nyda smiled. "Oh, I don't think so."
Ann rolled her eyes and turned back to Nathan. "By the way, what are
you doing wearing a sword? You, of all people--a wizard. Why are you wearing
a sword?"
Nathan looked hurt. "Why, Nyda thinks I look dashing with a sword."
Ann fixed her eyes on the dark passageway ahead. "I just bet she does."
Standing at the edge of a narrow rim of rock, Richard looked down on
the ragged gray wisps of clouds below. Out in the open, the cool damp air
that drifted over him carried the aromas of balsam trees, moss, wet leaves,
and saturated soil. He inhaled deeply the fragrant reminders of home. The
rock, mostly granite, cracked and weather-worn into pillowed blocks, looked
much the same as that in his Hartland woods. The mountains, however, were
far larger. The slope rising up behind him was dizzying.
To the west before him, far below, lay a vast stretch of fractured
ground and ever-rising rugged hills carpeted in forests. To his left and
right, because he knew what he was looking for, he could just make out the
strip of ground, devoid of trees, where the boundary had been. Farther off
to the west rose up the lesser mountains, mostly barren, that bordered the
wasteland. That wasteland, and the place called the Pillars of Creation, was
no longer visible. Richard was happy to have left it far behind.
The sky was empty of black-tipped races--for the moment, anyway. The
huge birds most likely knew that Richard, Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and
Owen were heading west.
Richard had shot the last five races as they had begun gathering in
their circling behavior, surprising them by being high up the side of the
mountain above the others in his group, closer to where the races flew.
After killing the races, Richard had led the rest of his small company into
denser woods. He didn't think that the races they'd been seeing up until
then had spotted them since. Now that they were traveling through forests of
towering trees Richard thought that, if he was careful, they might be able
to lose their watchers.
If this man, Nicholas, had seen them through the eyes of those five
races, then he knew they had been headed west. But, now that they were
hidden, he couldn't assume that they would continue west. If Richard could
disappear from where the birds would look for him, and failed to appear
where they would expect him, then Nicholas might have second thoughts. He
might realize they could have changed direction and gone north, or south.
Nicholas might then begin to realize that they had used that period of
confusion to run away somewhere else, to flee him.
It was possible that Richard could keep them hidden under the cover of
the trees and in so doing keep Nicholas from discovering them. Richard
didn't want the man to know where they'd gone, or to have any idea where
they were at any given time. It was hardly a certainty that he could deceive
Nicholas in this way, but Richard intended to try.
Shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand, Richard scanned the rise
of dense forest before them in order to get the lay of the land fixed in his
mind before he headed back in under the thick vegetation where the others
waited. The trailers of clouds below were but the tattered castoffs of the
churning blanket of gloom above them. The mountainside ascended sharply into
that wet overcast.
As Richard evaluated the rock, the slope, and the trees, he finally
found what he sought. He studied the ascent of the mountain one last time
before scanning the sky again to make sure it was clear. Seeing no races--or
any other birds, for that matter--he headed in to where the others waited.
He knew that just because he didn't see any birds didn't mean that they
weren't there watching him. There could be a few dozen races sitting in
trees where he would likely never spot them. But, for the moment, he was
still where they would expect him, so he wasn't greatly concerned.
He was about to do what they would not expect.
Richard climbed back up the slick bank of moss, leaves, and wet roots.
If he fell, he would have only the one chance to grab the small ledge where
he'd been standing before he would tumble out into the clear air and a drop
of several thousand feet. The thought of that drop made him hold tighter to
the roots to help him climb, and made him test carefully every score in the
rock where he placed his boot before committing his weight to it.
At the top of the bank he ducked under overhanging branches of scrawny
mountain maple that grew in the understory of hardwoods leaning out beside
the towering pines in an effort to capture the light. Leaves of the ash and
birch rising above the mountain maple collected the drixzle, until their
leaves had as much as they could hold and released it to patter down in fat
drops that slapped the lower leaves above Richard's head. When a light
breeze caught those upper leaves, they released their load to rain down in
sudden but brief torrents.
Stooping under low-spreading branches of fir trees, Richard followed
his track back through thickets of huckleberry into the more open ground of
the hushed woods beneath the thick canopy of ancient evergreens. Pine
needles had been woven by the wind into sprawling mats that cushioned his
steps. Spiraling webs hung by spiders to catch the small bugs that zigzagged
all about had instead netted the mist and were now dotted with shimmering
drops of water, like jeweled necklaces on display.
Back in the sheltering cover of rock and the thick growth of young
spruce, Kahlan stood when she saw Richard coming. When she stood, everyone
else then saw him, and came to their feet as well. Richard ducked in under
the wispy green branches.
"Did you see any races, Lord Rahl?" Owen asked, clearly nervous about
the predators.
"No," Richard told him as he picked up his pack and slung it over a
shoulder. He slipped his other arm beneath the second strap as he pulled the
pack up onto his back. "That doesn't mean they didn't see me, though."
Richard hooked his bow over the back of his left shoulder, along with a
waterskin.
"Well," Owen said, wringing his hands, "we can still hope they won't
know where we are."
Richard paused to look at the man. "Hope is not a strategy."
As the rest of them all started collecting their things from the brief
break, hooking gear on belts and shouldering packs, Richard drew Cara by the
arm out of the cover of small trees and pulled her close.
"See that rise through there?" he asked as he held her near him so she
could see where he was pointing. "With the strip of open ground that passes
in front of the young oak with the broken dead limb hanging down?"
Cara nodded. "Just after where the ground rises and goes over that
trickle of water running down the face of the rock, staining it green?"
"That's the spot. I want you to follow up over that area, then cut to
the right, taking that cleft up--that one there beyond the split in the
rock, there--and see if you can scout a trail up to the next shelf up above
these trees here."
Cara nodded. "Where will you be?"
"I'm going to take the rest of us up to the first break in the slope.
We'll be there. Come back and tell us if you find a way over the
projection."
Cara hoisted up her pack onto her back and then picked up the stout
staff Richard had cut for her.
"I didn't know that Mord-Sith could cut trails," Tom said.
"Mord-Sith can't," Cara said. "I, Cara, can. Lord Rahl taught me."
As she vanished into the trees, Richard watched her walk. She moved
gracefully, disturbing little as she made her way into the trackless woods.
She moved with an economy of effort that would conserve her energy. It had
not always been so; she had learned well the lessons he had given her.
Richard was pleased to see that the lessons had stuck and his efforts had
not been wasted.
Owen came forward, looking agitated. "But Lord Rahl, we can't go that
way." He waggled a hand back over his shoulder. "The trail goes that way.
That is the only way up and through the pass. There lies the way down, and
with it the way back up, now that the boundary is gone. It's not easy, but
it's the only way."
"It's the only way you know of. By how well that trail looks to be
traveled, I think it's the only way Nicholas knows of as well. It appears to
be the way the Order troops move in and out of Bandakar.
"If we go that way the races will be watching. If, on the other hand,
we don't show up, then/he won't know where we went. I want to keep it that
way from now on. I'm tired of playing mouse to his owl."
Richard let Kahlan lead them up through the woods, following the
natural route of the land when the way ahead was reasonably evident. When
she was in doubt she would glance back at him for direction. Richard would
look where she was to go, or nod in the direction he wanted her to take, or,
in a few cases, he needed to give her instruction.
By the lay of the land, Richard was pretty sure that there was an
ancient trail up through the mountain pass. That pass, that from afar looked
like a notch in the wall of mountains, was in reality no mere notch but a
broad area twisting as it rose back up between the mountains. Richard didn't
think that the path that the Bandakar people used to banish people through
the boundary was the only way through that pass. With the boundary in place
it may well have been, but the boundary was no longer there.
From what he'd seen so far, Richard suspected that there once had been
a route that in ancient times had been the main way in and out. Here and
there he was able to discern depressions that he believed were remnants of
that ancient, abandoned route.
While it was always possible that the old passage had been abandoned
for good reason, such as a landslide that made it impassable, he wanted to
know if that once traveled way was still usable. It would, at the least,
since it was in a different part of the mountains than the known path, take
them away from where the races were likely to be looking for them.
Jennsen walked up close beside Richard when the way through towering
pines was open enough. She tugged Betty along by her rope, keeping her from
stopping to sample plants along the way.
"Sooner or later the races will find us, don't you think?" Jennsen
asked. "I mean, if we don't show up where they expect to find us, then don't
you think they will search until they do find us? You were the one who said
that from the sky they could cover great distances and search us out."
"Maybe," Richard said. "But it will be hard to spot us in the woods if
we use our heads and stay hidden. In forests they can't search nearly as
much area as they could in the same amount of time out in the wasteland. In
open ground they could spot us miles away. Here, they will have a hard time
of it unless they're really close and we are careless.
"By the time we don't show up where the known trail makes it up into
Bandakar, they will have a vast area they suddenly will need to search and
they won't have any idea which direction to look. That compounds the problem
for them in finding us.
"I don't think that the viewing Nicholas gets through their eyes can be
very good, or he wouldn't need to gather the races now and again to circle.
If we can stay out of sight long enough, then we'll be among the people up
in Bandakar and then Nicholas, through the eyes of the races, will have a
hard, if not impossible, time picking us out from others."
Jennsen thought it over as they entered a stand of birch. Betty went
the wrong way around a tree and Jennsen had to stop to untangle her rope.
They all hunched their shoulders against the wet when a breeze brought down
a soaking shower.
"Richard," Jennsen asked in a voice barely above a whisper as she
caught back up with him, "what are you going to do when we get there?"
"I'm going to get the antidote so I don't die."
"I know that." Jennsen pulled a sodden ringlet of red hair back from
her face. "What I mean is, what are you going to do about Owen's people?"
Each breath he drew brought a slight stitch of pain deep in his lungs.
"I'm not sure, yet, just what I can do."
Jennsen walked in silence for a moment. "But you will try to help them,
won't you?"
Richard glanced over at his sister. "Jennsen, they're threatening to
kill me. They've proven that it isn't an empty threat."
She shrugged uncomfortably. "I know, but they're desperate." She
glanced ahead to make sure that Owen wouldn't hear. "They didn't know what
else to do to save themselves. They aren't like you. They never fought
anyone before."
Richard took a deep breath, the pain pulling tight across his chest
when he did so. "You'd never fought anyone before, either. When you thought
I was trying to kill you, as our father had, and you believed that I was
responsible for your mother's death, what did you do? I don't mean were you
correct about me, but what did you do in response to what you believed was
happening?"
"I resolved that if I wanted to live I would have to kill you before
you killed me."
"Exactly. You didn't poison someone and tell them to do it or they
would die. You decided that your life was worth living and that no one else
had the right to take it from you.
"When you are willing to meekly sacrifice your ultimate value, your
life, the only one you will ever have, to any thug who on a whim decides to
take it from you, then you can't be helped. You may be able to be rescued
for one day, but the next day another will come and you will again willingly
prostrate yourself before him. You have placed the value of the life of your
killer above your own.
"When you grant to anyone who demands it the right of life or death
over you, you have already become a willing slave in search of any butcher
who will have you."
She walked in silence for a time, thinking about what he'd said.
Richard noticed that she moved through the woods as he had taught Cara to
move. She was nearly as at home in the woods as he was.
"Richard." Jennsen swallowed. "I don't want those people to be hurt any
more. They've already suffered enough."
"Tell that to Kahlan if I die from their poison."
When they reached the meeting place, Cara wasn't there yet. They all
were ready for a brief rest. The spot, a break in the slope back against
granite that rose up steeply to the next projection in the mountain, was
protected high overhead by huge pines and closer down by brush. After so
long out in the heat of the desert, none of them were yet accustomed to the
wet chill. While they spread out to find rocks for seats so they wouldn't
have to sit in the wet leaf litter, Betty happily sampled the tasty weeds.
Owen sat to the far side, away from Betty.
Kahlan sat close to Richard on a small lump of rock. "How are you
doing? You look like you have a headache."
"Nothing to be done about it for now," he said.
Kahlan leaned closer. The warmth of her felt good against his side.
"Richard," she whispered, "remember Nicci's letter?"
"What about it?"
"Well, we assumed that this boundary into Bandakar being down was the
reason for the first warning beacon. Maybe we're wrong."
"What makes you think so?"
"No second beacon." She pointed with her chin off to the northwest. "We
saw the first way back down there. We're a lot closer to the place where the
boundary was and we haven't spotted a second beacon."
"Just as well," he said. "That was where the races were waiting for
us."
He remembered well when they found the little statue. The races were
perched in trees all around. Richard hadn't known what they were at the
time, other than they were large birds he'd never seen before. The instant
Cara picked up the statue, the black-tipped races had all suddenly taken to
wing. There had been hundreds.
"Yes," Kahlan said, "but without the second beacon, maybe this isn't
the problem that we thought caused the first."
"You're assuming that the second beacon will be for me--that I'm the
one it will be meant for and so we would have seen it. Nicci said that the
second beacon is for the one who has the power to fix the breach in the
seal. Maybe that's not me."
Looking at first startled by the idea, Kahlan thought it over. "I'm not
sure if I'd be pleased about that or not." She leaned tighter against him
and hooked an arm around his thigh. "But no matter who is meant to be the
one who can seal the breach again, the one who's supposed to restore the
boundary, I don't think they will be able to do so."
Richard ran his fingers back through his wet hair. "Well, if I'm the
one this dead wizard once believed could restore the boundary, he's wrong. I
don't know how to do such a thing."
"But don't you see, Richard? Even if you did know how, I don't think
you could."
Richard looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Jumping to
conclusions and letting your imagination get carried away, again?"
"Richard, face it, the boundary failed because of what I did. That's
why the warning beacon was for me--because I caused the seal to fail. You
aren't going to try to deny that, are you?"
"No, but we have a lot to learn before we know what's really going on."
"I freed the chimes," she said. "It's not going to do us any good to
try to hide from that fact."
Kahlan had used ancient magic to save his life. She had freed the
chimes in order to heal him. She'd had no time to spare; he would have died
within moments if she had not acted.
Moreover, she'd had no idea that the chimes would unleash destruction
upon the world. She hadn't known they had been created three thousand years
before from underworld powers as a weapon designed to consume magic. She had
been told only that she must use them to save Richard's life.
Richard knew what it felt like to be convinced of the facts behind
events and to have no one believe him. He knew she was now feeling that same
frustration.
"You're right that we can't hide from it--if it is a fact. But right
now we don't know that it is. For one thing, the chimes have been banished
back to the underworld."
"And what about what Zedd told us, about how once the destructive
cascade of magic begins--which it did--then there is no telling if it can be
stopped even if the chimes are banished. There is no experience in such an
event upon which to base predictions."
Richard didn't have an answer for her, and was at a disadvantage
because he didn't have her education in magic. He was saved from having to
speculate when Cara came in through a tight patch of young balsam trees. She
pulled her pack off her shoulders and let it slip to the ground as she sat
on a rock facing Richard.
"You were right. We can get through there. It looks to me like I can
see a way to continue on up from the ledge."
"Good," Richard said as he stood. "Let's get going. The clouds are
getting darker. I think we need to find a place to stop for the night."
"I spotted a place under the ledge, Lord Rahl. I think it might be a
dry place to stay."
"Good." Richard hoisted her pack. "I'll carry this for you for a while,
let you have a break."
Cara nodded her appreciation, falling into line as they moved through
the tight trees and immediately had to start to climb up the steeply rising
ground. There was enough exposed rock and roots to provide good steps and
handholds. Where some of those steps were tall, Richard stretched down to
give Kahlan a hand.
Tom helped Jennsen and passed Betty up a few times, even though the
goat was better at scrambling up over rock than they were. Richard thought
he was doing it more for Jennsen's peace of mind than Betty's. Jennsen
finally told Tom that Betty could climb on her own.
Betty proved her right, bleating down at Tom after effortlessly
clambering up a particularly trying spot.
"Why don't you help me up, then," Tom said to the goat.
Jennsen smiled along with Richard and Kahlan. Owen just watched as he
skirted the other way around the rock. He was afraid of Betty. Cara finally
asked for her pack back, having entertained long enough the possibility of
being considered frail.
Shortly after the rain started, they found the low slit of an opening
under a prominent ledge, just as Cara had said they would. It wasn't a cave,
but a spot where a slab from the face of the mountain above had broken off
and fallen over. Boulders on the ground held the slab up enough to create a
pocket beneath. It wasn't large, but Richard thought they would all fit
under it for the night.
The ground was dirty, scattered with collected leaf litter and forest
debris of bark, moss, and a lot of bugs. Tom and Richard used branches
they'd cut to quickly sweep the place out. They then laid down a clean bed
of evergreen boughs to keep them up off the water that did run in.
The rain was starting to come down harder, so they all squatted down
and hurried to move in under the rock. It wasn't a comfortable-looking spot,
being too low for them to stand in, but it was fairly dry.
Richard dared not let them have a fire, now that they had left the
regular trail, lest the smoke be spotted by the races. They had a cold
supper of meats, leftover bannock, and dried goods. They were all exhausted
from climbing all day, and while they ate engaged in only a bit of small
talk. Betty was the only one with enough room to stand. She pushed up
against Richard until she got his attention and a rub.
As darkness slowly enveloped the woods, they watched the rain fall
outside their cozy shelter, listening to the soft sound, all no doubt
wondering what lay ahead in a strange empire that had been sealed away for
three thousand years. Troops from the Imperial Order would be there, too.
As Richard sat watching out into the dark rain, listening to the sounds
of the occasional animal in the distance, Kahlan cuddled up beside him,
laying her head on his lap. Betty went deeper into the shelter and lay down
with Jennsen.
Kahlan, under the comfort of his hand resting tenderly on her shoulder,
was asleep in moments. As weary as he was from the day's hard journey,
Richard wasn't sleepy.
His head hurt and the poison deep within him made each breath catch. He
wondered what would strike him down first, the power of his gift that was
giving him the headaches, or Owen's poison.
He wondered, too, just how he was going to satisfy the demands of Owen
and his men to free their empire so that he could have the antidote. The
five of them, he, Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, and Tom, hardly seemed the army
needed to drive the Order out of Bandakar.
If he didn't, and if he couldn't get to the antidote, his life was
coming to a close. This very well could be his final journey.
It seemed like he had just gotten back together with Kahlan after being
separated from her for half his life. He wanted to be with her. He wanted
the two of them to be able to be alone.
If he didn't think of something, all they had in each other, all they
had ahead of them, was just about over. And that was without even
considering the headaches of the gift.
Or the Imperial Order capturing the Wizard's Keep.
Richard gripped the edge of the rock at the face of the opening to help
pull himself up and out from the dark hole in the abrupt rise of granite
before them. Once out, he brushed the sharp little granules of rock from his
hands as he turned to the others.
"It goes through. It isn't easy, but it goes through."
He saw a dubious look on Tom's face, and a look of consternation on
Owen's. Betty, her floppy ears perked ahead in what Richard thought could
only be a goat frown, peered down into the narrow chasm and bleated.
"But I don't think we can," Owen complained. "What if..."
"We get stuck?" Richard asked.
Owen nodded.
"Well, you have an advantage over Tom and me," Richard said as he
picked up his pack from nearby to the side where he'd left it. "You're not
quite as big. If I made it through and back, then you can make it, Owen."
Owen waved a hand up the steep ascent to his right. "But what about
that way? Couldn't we just go around?"
"I don't like going into dark, narrow places like this, either,"
Richard said. "But if we go around that way we have to go out on the ledges.
You heard what Cara said; it's narrow and dangerous. If it were the
only way it would be another matter, but it's not.
"The races could spot us out there. Worse, if they wanted, they could
attack us and we could easily fall or be forced over the edge. I don't like
going in places like this, but I don't think I'd like to be out there on a
windblown ledge no wider than the sole of my boot, with a fall of thousands
of feet straight down if I make one slip, and then have one of those races
suddenly show up to rip into me with their talons or those sharp beaks of
theirs. Would you prefer that?"
Owen licked his lips as he bent at the waist and looked into the narrow
passageway. "Well, I guess you're right."
"Richard," Kahlan asked in a whisper as the rest of them started taking
off their packs so they could more easily fit through, "if this was a trail,
as you suspect, why isn't there a better way through?"
"I think that sometime only in the last few thousand years this huge
section of the mountain broke away and slid down, coming to rest at this
angle, leaving a narrow passageway beneath it." He pointed up. "See up
there? I think this entire portion down here used to be up there. I think
it's now sitting right where the trail used to be."
"And there's no other way but this cave or the ledges?"
"I'm not saying that. I believe there's other old routes, but we would
have to backtrack for most of a day to take the last fork I saw, and then
there isn't any guarantee with that one, either. If you really want, though,
we can go back and try."
Kahlan shook her head. "We can't afford to lose any time. We need to
get to the antidote."
Richard nodded. He didn't know how he was supposed to rid an entire
empire of the Imperial Order so they could get to the antidote, but he had a
few ideas. He needed to get the antidote; he saw no reason he had to play by
Owen's rules--or the Order's.
Kahlan gave the narrow, dark tunnel another look. "You're sure there
aren't any snakes in there?"
"I didn't see any."
Tom handed Richard his sword. "I'll go last," he said. "If you make it
through, I can."
Richard nodded as he laid the baldric over his shoulder. He turned the
scabbard at his hip in order to clear the rock and then started in. He
hugged his pack to his abdomen as he crouched to make it into the small
space. The slab of rock above him lay at an angle, so that he couldn't
remain upright, but had to twist sideways and back as he went into the
darkness. The farther in he went, the darker it became. As the others
followed him into the narrow passage, it blocked much of the light, making
it even darker.
The rains of recent days had finally ended, but runnels and runoff
continued to flow from the mountain. Their wading through ankle-deep water
standing in the bottom of the cavern sent echoes through the narrow
confines. The waves in the water played gloomy light along the wet walls,
providing at least some illumination.
The thought occurred to him that if he was a snake, this would make a
good spot to call home. The thought also occurred to him that if Kahlan,
right behind him, happened upon a snake in such cramped quarters, she would
not be pleased with him in the least for taking her in.
Things that were frightening outside were different when you couldn't
maneuver, couldn't run. Panic always seemed to lurk in tight places.
As it became darker, Richard had to feel his way along the cold stone.
In places where water seeped down the rock, the walls were slimy. In some
spots there was mud, in other places dry rock to walk on. Most of it,
though, was wet muck. Spongy leaves had collected in some of the irregular
low places.
By the smell, it was obvious that some animal had died and was
decomposing somewhere in the sodden grotto. He heard moans and complaints
from behind when the rest of them encountered the stench. Betty bleated her
unhappiness. Jennsen's echoing whisper told the goat to be quiet.
Even the displeasure of the smell was forgotten as they worked their
way under the immense curtain of rock draped over where the trail used to
be. This wasn't a true cave, like underground caves Richard had encountered
before. It was only a narrow crack under what was, in essence, a big rock.
There were no chambers and different routes to worry about; there was only
one narrow void under the rock, so lighting their way wasn't critical. He
knew, too, that it wasn't all that long. It only felt that way in the dark.
Richard reached the spot where the way ahead abruptly started up at a
steep angle. Feeling the walls all around to find places to grab, he started
the difficult climb. In places he had to wedge his back against one wall and
use his feet against the opposite wall to brace himself while grappling for
any ledge or crack in the rock he could find to help pull himself up. He had
to balance his pack in his lap as he went, and keep his sword from getting
wedged. It was slow going.
Richard finally reached the high table where the rock from above had
first come down. The hollow left under the mountain of rock was basically
horizontal, rather than vertical, as it had been. Rock rested along the edge
of most of the shelf, but there was one place with ample room for them to
make it through, over the edge and then in under the slab above them. Once
up onto the flat, he leaned over as far as he could, extending a hand down
to help Kahlan.
He heard the grunts of effort from below Kahlan as the rest of the
small company worked their way up the precipitous passage.
From his place atop the table of rock, Richard could finally see light
ahead and light above. He had scouted the route and knew that they were
close to being out the other side, but first they had to make it across the
shelf of rock where the slab left little room above them. It was
uncomfortably confining.
Richard didn't like such places. He knew, though, that there was no
other way through. This was the place he worried most about. Tight as it
was, it was fortunately close to the end.
"We have to crawl on our bellies from here," he told Kahlan. "Hold my
ankle. Have everyone behind do the same."
Kahlan peered ahead toward the light coming from the opening. The glare
of that light made it difficult to see to the sides. "Richard, it doesn't
look big enough. It's just a crack."
Richard pushed his pack out onto the rock. "There's a way. We'll be out
soon."
Kahlan let out a deep breath. "All right. The sooner the better."
"Listen to me," he called back into the darkness. "We're almost out."
"If you make us walk through any more rotting animals, I'll clobber
you," Jennsen called up to him. Everyone laughed.
"No more of that," Richard said. "But there is a difficult spot ahead.
I've been through it, so I know we can all make it. But you have to listen
to me and do as I say. Crawl on your stomach, pushing your pack ahead of
you. Hold the ankle of the person in front of you. That way you'll all
follow in the right place.
"You'll see the light ahead of you. You can't go toward the light. That
isn't the way out. The ceiling drops down too low and the slope of the rock
starts pitching down to the left. If you slip down in there it gets even
tighter; you'll not be able to get out. We have to go around the low place
in the ceiling. We have to go around on the right side, where it's dark, but
not as low. Does everyone understand?"
Agreement echoed up from the darkness.
"Richard," Jennsen called in a small voice, "I don't like being in
here. I want out."
Her voice carried a thread of panic.
"I don't either," he told her. "But I've been through and out the other
side. I made it through and back. You'll be fine. Just follow me and you
won't have a problem."
Her voice drifted up to him from the darkness. "I want to go back."
Richard couldn't let her go back. The ledges, where they were exposed
to the races, were too dangerous.
"Here," Kahlan told her, "you come ahead of me. Take hold of Richard's
ankle and you'll be out before the rest of us."
"I'll see that Betty watches you go through and follows," Tom offered.
That seemed to break the impasse. Jennsen moved up to the ledge and
handed her pack up. Richard, lying on his stomach in the low slit of the
shelf, took her hand to help her up.
When she saw in the light how low and tight it was, that Richard had to
lie on his stomach, she started to tremble. When Richard helped pull her up,
and her face came up close to him, he could see her tears in the dim light.
Her wide blue eyes took in the way ahead, how low it was.
Please, Richard, I'm afraid. I don't want to go in under there."
He nodded. "I know, but it's not far. I won't let you stay in here.
I'll see that you get out." He cupped a hand to the side of her face. "I
promise."
"How do I know you'll keep your promise?"
Richard smiled. "Wizards always keep their promises."
"You said you don't know much about being a wizard."
"But I know how to keep promises."
She at last agreed and let him help her the rest of the way up. When he
pulled her all the way up onto the shelf of the mountainside, and she
actually felt how the roof of rock didn't allow her any room to get up and
that she had to lie flat just to fit, and worse, that the roof of rock was
only scant inches above her back, she started to shiver with terror.
"I know how you feel," he told her. "I do, Jennsen. I hate this, too,
but we have no choice. It's not dangerous if you just follow me through the
place where there's room. Just follow me and we'll be out before you know
it."
"What if it comes down and crushes us? Or what if it comes down just
enough to pin us so we can't move or breathe?"
"It won't," he insisted. "It's been here for ages. It isn't going to
come down. It's not."
She nodded but he didn't know if she really heard him. She began to
whimper as he turned himself around so he could lead her out.
"Take my ankle," he called back to her. "Here, push your pack up to me
and I'll take care of it for you. Then you'll only have to worry about
holding on to my ankle and following behind."
"What if it gets too tight and I can't breathe? Richard, what if I
can't breathe?"
Richard kept his voice calm and confident. "I'm bigger than you, so if
I fit, you will."
She only nodded as she shivered. He extended his hand back and had to
tell her again to pass her pack forward before she did as he instructed.
Once he had her pack, he tied the straps to his and pushed them both on
ahead. She seized his ankle as if it were the only thing keeping her from
falling into the arms of the Keeper of the underworld.
He didn't complain, though, about how hard she held him; he knew her
fear.
Richard pushed the packs out ahead and started inching his way forward.
He tried not to think about the rough ceiling of rock only a hand-width
above his back. He knew it would become ftarrower before they got out. The
shelf of rock sloped upward to the right slightly, into the dark. The light
was to the left, and down.
It looked like the easiest way out was to go straight toward the
opening. It wasn't far. They had to go, instead, up into the darkness and
around the narrowing of the cleft in order to get around to a place where
they could fit through. Forcing himself to go up, into the dark where it
felt tighter and more closed in, rather than toward the light of the
opening, felt wrong, but he had already scouted the route and he knew that
his feelings were wrong about this.
As he moved deeper into the darkness, going around the impassable area
in the center of the chamber, he reached the spot where the rock above
lowered. Advancing in farther, it came down until it pressed against his
back. He knew it wasn't far, not more than a dozen feet, but, without being
able to take a full breath, the cramped passage was daunting.
Richard pushed the packs ahead as he wriggled and wormed his way along.
He had to push with the toes of his boots and, with his fingers finding any
purchase available, pull his chest through, force himself to make headway
into the dark, away from the light.
Jennsen's fingers had an iron grip on his ankle. That was fine with
Richard, because he could then help pull her through with him. He wanted to
be able to help pull her through when she reached the spot that would
compress her chest.
And then she suddenly let go of his ankle.
Off behind him, Richard could hear Jennsen scrambling away. "Jennsen?
What's going on? What are you doing?" She was crying out, whining in terror,
as she bolted toward the light at the opening.
"Jennsen!" Richard called to her. "Don't go that way! Stay with me!"
Wedged in as he was, he couldn't easily turn to see. He forced himself
ahead, crabbing sideways, trying to spot her. Jennsen was clambering toward
the light, ignoring him as he called to her. Kahlan wormed her way up to
him. "What's she doing?" "She's trying to get out. She sees the opening, the
light, and won't listen."
Richard shoved the packs and frantically worked his way ahead, moving
into the area beyond the tight spot, to where it was open enough that he
could at last get a full breath and almost get up on his hands and knees.
Jennsen screamed. Richard could see her clawing frantically at the
rock, but she wasn't making any headway. In a frenzy of effort, she tried to
push herself forward, but, instead, she'd slipped sideways farther down the
slope, wedging herself in tighter.
Each exaggerated, panting breath as she strained and stretched
ratcheted her in deeper.
Richard called to her, trying to get her to listen, to do as he said.
In her desperation, she wasn't responding to any of his instructions. She
saw the opening, wanted out, and would not listen to him.
Fast as he could, Richard scrambled through the darkness and around
toward the opening, guiding Kahlan, Owen, Cara, and Tom through the only way
he knew they could make it. Kahlan held tight to his ankle and he could hear
by the panting of effort that the rest of them were all following in a line
behind her.
Jennsen screamed in terror. She struggled madly, but couldn't move.
Wedged in as she was, with rock compressing her rib cage top and bottom, it
was becoming difficult for her to breathe.
"Jennsen! Take a slow breath! Slow down!" Richard called to her as he
scurried around toward the opening. "Breathe slow! Breathe!"
Richard finally reached the opening. He emerged from the dark crevasse,
squinting in the sudden light. On his knees, he leaned in and helped pull
Kahlan out. Betty scrambled out, somehow having passed the rest of the
people. As Owen and then Cara clambered out of the opening, Richard pulled
the baldric over his head and handed his sword to Kahlan.
Tom called out that he was going back in to try to reach Jennsen.
As soon as the rest were safely out, Richard dove back into the
fissure. Headfirst, on his hands and knees, he scuttled into the dark. He
could see that Tom, from his angle of approach, had no chance to get to her.
"Tom, I'll get her."
"I can reach her," the man said even as he was getting himself wedged
tight.
"No you can't," Richard said in a stern tone. "Wishing won't make it
so. You'll just get yourself stuck. Listen to me. Back out, now, or your
weight will help push you downhill and get you stuck so hard that we won't
be able to get you out. Back up, now, while you're still able to. Go. Let me
get her."
Tom watched Richard moving around behind him, and then, making a face
that showed how unhappy he was to be doing it, he started pushing himself
back up into the darkness, where there was a few precious inches' more room
that would let him make it back out.
Richard worked his way through the tight spot and then moved down the
slope so that he wouldn't be facing downhill as he tried to help Jennsen and
possibly wedge himself in tighter than he wanted. If he wasn't careful, he
would do the same thing Tom had been about to do. Down in the darkness,
Jennsen cried in panic.
Richard, flat on his belly, wiggled and snaked his way deeper, all the
while moving to his left, down the pitch in the shelf of rock. "Jennsen,
breathe. I'm coming. It's all right."
"Richard! Please don't leave me here! Richard!"
Richard spoke in a calm, quiet voice as he moved around behind her down
into the tighter part of the cave. "I'm not going to leave you. You'll be
fine. Just wait for me."
"Richard! I can't move!" She grunted with effort. "I can't breathe! The
ceiling is coming down! It's moving--I can feel it coming down. It's
squeezing me! Please help me! Richard--please don't leave me!"
"You're fine, Jennsen. The ceiling isn't moving. You're just stuck.
I'll have you out in a minute."
Even as he worked his way into the low spot, trying to get up close
behind her, she was still struggling to move forward, making it worse--
there was no way she could go forward and make it out. As she kept
struggling, though, she was slowly slipping deeper down the slope and with
every frantic breath wedging herself in tighter. He could hear how
desperately she was trying to breathe, to draw each shallow breath against
the immovable compression of rock.
Finally all the way back around behind her, Richard started pushing
himself in the way she'd gone. She had gone into a narrow channel that
closed down on the uphill side of her, so there could be no moving her
sideways up the slope; he had to get her to back up the way she'd gone in.
He had to get her to go away from the light and back into what she feared.
The roof of rock scraped against his back, making it difficult to draw
a full breath. He had to take shallow breaths as he moved deeper. The
farther he went, he could not even breathe that deeply.
The need for air, for a deep breath, made the pain of the poison feel
like knives twisting in his ribs. Arms stretched forward, Richard used his
boots to force himself in deeper, trying to ignore his own rising sense of
panic. He reasoned with himself that there were others who knew where he
was, that he wasn't alone. With the powerful feeling that a mountain of rock
was crushing him, reasoning with himself was difficult, especially when the
shallow split of rock he was pressed into hardly let him get any air as it
was and he was desperately working himself deeper trying to reach Jennsen.
He knew that he had to help pull her out of where she was stuck or she would
die there.
"Richard," she cried, "it hurts. I can't breathe. I'm stuck. Dear
spirits, I can't breathe. Please, Richard, I'm scared."
Richard stretched, trying to reach her ankle. It was too far away. He
had to turn his head sideways to advance. Both ears scraped against rock. He
wiggled, inching in tighter even though his better judgment was telling him
that he was already in trouble.
"Jennsen, please, I need you to help me. I need you to push back. Push
back with your hands. Push back toward me."
"No! I have to get out! I'm almost there!"
"No, you're not almost there. You can't make it that way. You have to
trust me. Jennsen, you've got to push back so I can reach you."
"No! Please! I want out! I want out!"
"I'll get you out, I promise. Just push back so I can reach you."
With her blocking the light he couldn't tell if she was doing as he
instructed or not. He squirmed in another inch, then another. His head was
almost stuck. He couldn't imagine how she had gotten in as far as she had.
"Jennsen, push back." His voice was strained. He couldn't get enough of
a breath to talk and to breathe, too.
His fingers stretched forward, reaching, stretching, reaching. His
lungs burned for air. He just wanted to take a deep breath. He desperately
needed a breath. Not being able to draw one was not only painful, but
frightening. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.
As high as they were in the mountains, the air was already thin and it
was difficult to get enough air the way it was. Limited to taking shallow
breaths was making him light-headed. If he didn't get back to where he could
breathe soon, the two of them were going to be forever in this terrible
place.
The tips of Richard's fingers caught the edge of the sole of Jennsen's
boot. He couldn't get a good grip on her foot, though.
"Push back," he whispered into the dark. It was all he could do to keep
his own panic in check. "Jennsen, do as I say. Push back. Do it."
Jennsen's boot moved back into his hand. He snatched it in a tighter
grip and immediately worked his way back a few inches. Pulling with all his
might, he strained to drag her back with him. Try as he might, she wouldn't
budge. She was either stuck tight, or was fighting to go forward.
"Push back," he whispered again. "Use your hands, Jennsen. Push back
toward me. Push."
She was sobbing and crying something he couldn't make out. Richard
wedged his boots, top and bottom, in the tight cleft and then pulled with
all his might. His arm shook with the effort. He managed to draw her back a
few inches.
He wiggled himself back an equal distance and pulled again. With
agonizing effort, he slowly, painstakingly, started drawing her out of the
dead end she had fled into in a panicked attempt to get out.
At times, she tried to squirm back toward the light. Richard, the rock
compressing him tight, kept a firm hold of her boot and muscled her back yet
more, not allowing her to take back any of the distance he gained.
He couldn't straighten his head. That made it more difficult to use his
muscles to move the both of them. With his head lying on the right, he
reached back with his left arm and gripped a small lip of rock in the
ceiling, using it to help haul them back. With his right arm, stretched
forward and holding her by the boot, he drew her back inch by inch.
As he reached back again for another handhold, Richard saw something
not far to his left, down the slope, wedged where the rock narrowed. At
first he thought it was a rock. As he struggled to draw Jennsen back, he
stared at the thing also stuck in the rock. He reached to the side and
touched it. It was smooth and didn't feel at all like the granite.
As he began to make good progress backward he stretched to the side and
managed to get his fingers around the thing. He pulled it to his side and
continued to wiggle back.
With great relief, he was finally back far enough to where he was able
to get enough air. He lay still for a time, just catching his breath. Almost
as much as air, though, he wanted out.
While he talked to Jennsen, distracting her with instructions she only
intermittently followed, he began forcing her back and to the right, where
there was more room. Finally, he managed to move up beside her and seize her
wrist. Once he had her, he started moving her back up the slope, into the
darkness, into the tight place that he knew was the only true way out.
With him up beside her, she was a little more cooperative. All the
while, he kept reassuring her. "This is the way, Jennsen. This is the way.
I'll not leave you. I'll get you out. This is the way. Just come with me and
we'll be out in a few minutes."
When they worked their way up into the dark, tight spot, she began
struggling again, trying again to scramble for the light of the opening, but
he was blocking her way. He stayed close at her side as he kept them both
moving forward. She seemed to find strength in his constant assurances and
his firm grip on her wrist. He was not about to let her get away from him
again.
When they pushed through to the place where the roof rose up a bit, she
started weeping with expectant joy. He knew the feeling. Once the ceiling
rose up a foot or two, he hurried as fast as he could to get her to the
opening, to the light.
The others were waiting right at the entrance to help pull them out.
Richard held the thing he'd retrieved under his left arm as he helped push
Jennsen out first. She rushed into Tom's waiting arms, but only until
Richard crawled out and got to his feet. Then, crying with relief, Jennsen
fled into his arms, clinging to him for dear life.
"I'm so sorry," she said over and over as she cried. "I'm so sorry,
Richard. I was so afraid."
"I know," he comforted as he held her.
He'd been in a similar situation before where he thought he might never
get himself out of such a terrifying place, so he did understand. In such a
stressful circumstance, where you feared you were about to die, it was easy
to be overpowered by the blind need to escape--to live.
"I feel so confused."
"I don't like such tight places, either," he said. "I understand."
"But I don't understand. I've never been afraid of places like that.
Ever since I was very young I've hid in tight little places. Such places
always made me feel safe because no one could find me or get to me. When you
spend your life running and hiding from someone like Darken Rahl, you come
to appreciate small, dark, concealed places.
"I don't know what came over me. It was the strangest thing. It was
like these thoughts that I wouldn't get out, that I couldn't breathe, that I
would die, just started coming into my head. Feelings I've never had before
just started to seep into me. They just seemed to overwhelm me. I've never
done anything like that before."
"Do you still feel these strange feelings?"
"Yes," she said as she wept, "but they're starting to fade, now that
I'm out, now that it's over."
Everyone else had moved off a ways to give her the time she needed to
set herself straight. They sat not far off waiting on an old log turned
silver in the weather.
Richard didn't try to rush her. He just held her and let her know she
was safe.
"I'm so sorry, Richard. I feel like such a fool."
"No need. It's over, now."
"You kept your promise," she said through her tears.
Richard smiled, happy that he had.
Owen, his face tense with worry, looked like he couldn't help himself
from asking a question. "But Jennsen?" he asked as he stepped forward. "Why
didn't you do magic to help yourself?"
"I can't do magic any more than you can."
He rubbed his palms on his hips. "You could if you let yourself. You
are one who is able to touch magic."
"Other people might be able to do magic, but I can't. I don't have any
ability for it."
"What others think is magic is only themselves tricking their senses
and only blinds them to real magic. Our eyes blind us, our senses deceive
us--as I explained before. Only those who have never seen magic, only those
who have never used, sensed, perceived it, only those who do not have any
ability or faculty for it, can actually understand it and therefore only
they can be true practitioners of real magic. Magic must be based entirely
on faith, if it is to be real. You must believe, and then you truly can see.
You are one who can do magic."
Richard and Jennsen stared at the man.
"Richard," Kahlan said in an odd voice before he could say anything to
Owen. "What's that."
Richard blinked at her. "What?"
She pointed. "That, there, under your arm. What is it?"
"Oh," he said. "Something I found wedged in the rock near Jennsen, back
in where she was stuck. In the dark, I couldn't tell what it was other than
that it wasn't rock."
He pulled it out to have a look.
It was a statue.
A statue in his likeness, wearing his war wizard's outfit. The cape was
fixed in place as it swirled to the side of the legs, making the base wider
than the waist.
The lower portion of the figure was a translucent amber color, and
through it could be seen a falling trickle of sand that had nearly filled
the bottom half.
The statue was not all amber, though, as Kahlan's had been. Near the
middle, obscuring the narrowing where the sand dribbled through, the
translucent amber of the bottom began darkening. The higher up the figure,
the darker it became.
The top--the shoulders and head--were as black as a night stone.
A night stone was an underworld thing, and Richard remembered all too
well what that wicked object had looked like. The top of the statue looked
to be made of the same sinister material, all glossy and smooth and so black
that it looked as if it might suck the light right out of the day.
Richard's heart sank at seeing himself represented in such a way, as a
talisman touched by death.
"She made it," Owen said, shaking an accusatorial finger at Jennsen
still sheltered under Richard's right arm. "She made it with magic. I told
you she could. She spun it of evil magic back in that cave when she wasn't
thinking. The magic took over and came out of her, then, when she wasn't
thinking about how she couldn't do magic."
Owen didn't have any idea what he was talking about. This was not a
statue Jennsen made.
This was the second warning beacon, meant to warn the one who could
seal the breach.
"Lord Rahl..."
Richard looked up. It was Cara's voice.
She was standing off a ways, her back to them, looking up at a small
spot of sky off through the trees. Jennsen turned in his arms to see what
had put the odd tone in Cara's voice. Holding his sister close, he stepped
up behind Cara and peered up through the trees where she was looking.
Through a thin area in the canopy of pine, he could see the rim of the
mountain pass above them. Silhouetted against iron gray clouds stealing past
was something man-made.
It looked like a huge statue sitting atop the pass.
Icy wind tore at Richard's and Kahlan's clothes as they huddled close
together at the edge of a thick stand of spruce trees. Low, ragged clouds
raced by as if to escape the colossal, dark, swirling clouds building above
them. Fat flakes of snow danced in the cold gusts. Richard's ears burned in
the numbing cold.
"What do you think?" Kahlan asked.
Richard shook his head. "I don't know." He glanced behind them, back
into the shelter of the trees. "Owen, are you sure you don't know what it
is? You don't have any idea at all?"
The roiling clouds made an ominous backdrop for the imposing statue
sitting up on the ridge.
"No, Lord Rahl. I've never been here before; none of us ever traveled
this route. I don't know what it could be. Unless .. ." His words trailed
off into the moan of the wind.
"Unless what?"
Owen shrank back, twisting the button on his coat as he glanced to the
Mord-Sith on one side of him and Tom and Jennsen on the other. "There is a
foretelling--from the ones who gave us our name and protected us by sealing
the pass. It is taught that when they gave our empire its name, they also
told us that one day a savior would come to us."
Richard wanted to ask the man just what exactly it was he thought they
needed saving from--if they had lived in such an enlightened culture where
they were safe from the unenlightened "savages" of the rest of the world.
Instead, he asked a simpler question he thought Owen might be able to
answer.
"So you think that maybe that's a statue of him, your savior?"
Owen fidgeted, his shoulders finally working into a shrug. "He is not
just a savior. The foretelling also says that he will destroy us."
Richard frowned at the man, hoping this was not going to be another of
his convoluted beliefs. "This savior of yours is going to destroy you. That
makes no sense."
Owen was quick to agree. "I know. No one understands it."
"Maybe it's meant to say that someone will come to save your people,"
Jennsen suggested, "but he will fail and so only end up destroying them in
the attempt."
"Maybe." Owen's face twisted with the displeasure of having to
contemplate such an outcome.
"Maybe," Cara suggested in a grim tone, "it means this man will come,
and after seeing your people, decide they aren't worth saving"-- she leaned
toward Owen--"and decide to destroy them instead."
Owen, as he stared up at Cara, seemed to be considering her words as a
real possibility, rather than the sarcasm Richard knew them to be.
"I don't think that is the meaning," Owen finally told her after
earnest consideration. He turned back to Richard. "The foretelling, as it
has been taught to us, you see, says, first, that a man will come who will
destroy us. It then goes on to say that he is the one who will save us.
'Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you,' " Owen quoted. "That is
how we have been taught the words, how they were told to my people when we
were put here, beyond this pass."
" 'Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you,' " Richard
repeated. He took a patient breath. "Whatever it originally said has
probably been confused and all jumbled up as it's been passed down. It
probably no longer resembles the original saying."
Rather than disagree, as Richard expected, Owen nodded. "Some believe,
as you say, that over the time since we were protected and given our name,
maybe the true words have been lost, or confused. Others believe that it has
been passed down intact and must have important meaning. Some believe that
the foretelling was meant to say only that a savior will come. Others think
it means only that a destroyer will come."
"And what do you believe?" Richard asked.
Owen twiddled the button on his coat until Richard thought it might
come off. "I believe that the foretelling is meant to say that a destroyer
will come--and I believe that he is this man Nicholas, of the Order-- and
then that a savior will come and save us. I believe that man is you, Lord
Rahl. Nicholas is our destroyer. You are our savior."
Richard knew from the book that prophecy didn't function with these
people, with pillars of Creation.
"What your people think is a foretelling," Richard said, "is probably
nothing more than an old adage that people have gotten mixed up."
Owen held his ground, if hesitantly. "We are taught that this is a
foretelling. We are taught that those who named us told us this foretelling
and that they wanted it passed down so all might know of it."
Richard sighed, the wind pulling out a long cloud of his breath. "So
you think that up there is a statue of me, put there thousands of years ago
by the ones who protected you behind the boundary? How would they know, long
before I was born, what I would look like in order to make a statue of me?"
"The true reality knows everything that will be," Owen said by rote. He
forced a half smile as he shrugged again. "After all, it made that little
statue that you found look like you."
Unhappy to be reminded of that, Richard turned away from the man. The
small figure had been made to look like him by magic tied to the boundary,
and, possibly, to a dead wizard in the underworld.
Richard scanned the sky, the rocky slopes all around, the tree line. He
didn't see any sign of life. The statue--they still couldn't quite make out
what it was--sat distant up a treeless, rocky rise. It was yet quite a climb
up to that rim of the pass, to that statue.
Richard was not going to like it if it did indeed turn out to be a
statue of him beneath the gathering gloom.
He already didn't like it one bit that the second warning beacon was
meant for him. It bound him to a responsibility, a duty, he neither wanted
nor could accomplish.
He had no idea how to restore the seal on Bandakar. Zedd had once
created boundaries that were probably similar to the one that had been down
here in the Old World, but even Zedd had used constructed magic he had found
in the Keep. Such constructed spells had been created by ancient wizards
with vast power and knowledge of such things. Zedd had told him that there
were no more such spells.
Richard certainly had no idea how to call forth a spell that could
create such a boundary. More to the point, he didn't see how it would do any
good even if he knew how. What had really been freed from Bandakar when the
boundary failed was the trait of being born without any trace of the
gift--that was why they had all been banished here in the first place. The
Imperial Order was already breeding women from Bandakar in order to breed
the gift out of mankind. There was no telling how far that trait had already
spread. Breeding the women, as it sounded like they were doing, now, would
gain them more children who were pristinely ungifted, children who would be
indoctrinated in the teachings of the Order.
When they started using the men for breeding, the number of such
children would vastly increase. A woman could have a child every year. In
the same time, a man could sire a great number of children bearing his
pristinely ungifted trait.
Despite the Order's creed of self-sacrifice, they had not yet, it would
seem, been willing to sacrifice their women to such an undertaking. Raping
the women in Bandakar and proclaiming it for the good of mankind was fine
with the men of the Order. For the men ruling the Imperial Order to give
over their own women to be bred, however, was quite another matter.
Richard had no doubt that they eventually would start using their own
women to this purpose, but that would come later. In the meantime, the Order
would probably soon start using all the women captured and held as slaves
for this purpose, breeding them to men from Bandakar. The Order's conquest
of the New World would provide them with plenty more women for breeding
stock.
Whereas in ancient times those in the New World tried to limit the
trait from spreading in man, the Imperial Order would do whatever they could
to accelerate it.
"Richard," Kahlan asked in a low voice, so the others farther back in
the trees wouldn't hear, "what do you think it means that the second warning
beacon, the one for you, is turning black like the night stone? Do you think
it means to show you the time you have left to get the antidote?"
Since he had only just found it, he hadn't given it much thought. Even
so, he could interpret it only as a dire warning. The night stone was tied
to the spirits of the dead--to the underworld.
It could be, as Kahlan suggested, that the darkening was meant to show
him how the poison was taking him, and that he was running out of time. For
a number of reasons, though, he didn't believe that was the explanation.
"I don't know for sure," he finally told her, "but I don't think it's a
warning about the poison. I think that the way the statue is turning black
is meant to represent, materially, how the gift is failing in me, how it's
slowly beginning to kill me, how the underworld, the world of the dead, is
slowly enshrouding me."
Kahlan's hand slipped up on his arm, a gesture of comfort as well as
worry. "That was my thought, too. I was hoping you would argue against it.
This means that the gift might be more of a problem than the poison--if,
after all, this dead wizard used the beacon to warn you about it."
Richard wondered if the statue up on the ridge of the pass would hold
any answers. He certainly didn't have any. To make it up there and see, they
would have to leave the shelter of the forest and travel out in the open.
Richard turned and signaled the others forward.
"I don't think the races would be expecting us here," he said as they
gathered around him. "If we really did manage to lose them they won't know
where we went, what direction, so they won't know to look for us, here. I
think we can make it up there without the races, and therefore Nicholas,
knowing."
"Besides," Tom said, "with those low clouds hugging most of the
mountains, they may not be able to search."
"Maybe," Richard said.
It was getting late. In the distant mountains a wolf howled. On another
slope across a deep cleft in the mountains, a second wolf answered. There
would be more than two.
Betty's ears perked toward the howls as she crowded against Jenn-sen's
legs.
"What if Nicholas uses something else?" Jennsen asked.
Cara gripped the blond braid lying over the front of her shoulder as
she scanned the woods to the sides. "Something else?"
Jennsen pulled her cloak tighter around herself as the wind tried to
lift it open. "Well, if he can look through a race's eyes, then maybe he can
look through the eyes of something else."
"You mean a wolf?" Cara asked. "You think that wolf you heard might be
him."
"I don't know," Jennsen admitted.
"For that matter," Richard said, "if he can look through the black eyes
of the races, maybe he could just as easily look through the eyes of a
mouse."
Tom swiped his windblown blond hair back from his forehead as he cast a
wary glance at the sky. "Why do you think he always seems to use the races,
then?"
"Probably because they're better able to cover great distances,"
Richard said. "After all, he'd have a lot of trouble finding us with a
mouse.
"More than that, though, I think he likes the imagery of being with
such creatures, likes thinking of himself as being part of a powerful
predator. He is, after all, hunting us."
"So you think we only have to worry about the races, then?" Jennsen
asked.
"I think he would prefer to watch through the races, but that isn't his
end, only the means," Richard said. "He's after Kahlan and me. Since getting
us is his end, I think he will turn to whatever means he must, if necessary.
He very well might look through even the eyes of a mouse if it would help
him get us."
"If his end is having you," Cara said, "then Owen is helping his ends
by bringing you right to him."
Richard couldn't argue with that. For the moment, though, he had to go
along with Owen's wishes. Soon enough, Richard intended to start doing
things his own way.
"For now," Richard said, "he's still trying to find us, so I expect
that he will stick to the races, since they can cover great distances. But,
since I've killed races with arrows, he must realize that we at least
suspect someone is watching us through their eyes. As we get closer to him,
I see no reason that in the future he might not use something else so we
won't know he's watching us."
Kahlan looked to be alarmed by the idea. "You mean, something like a
wolf, or, or ... I don't know, maybe an owl?"
"Owl, pigeon, sparrow. If I had to guess, then I'd guess that at least
until he finds us he will use a bird."
Kahlan huddled close beside him, using his body to block the wind. They
were up high enough in the mountains that they were just beginning to
encounter snow. From what Richard had seen of the Old World, it generally
appeared too warm for snow. For there to be snow this time of year it could
only be in the most imposing of mountains.
Richard gestured to the icy flakes swirling in the air. "Owen, does it
get cold in winter in Bandakar? Do you get snow?"
"Winds come down from the north, following down our side of the
mountains, I believe. In winter it gets cold. Every couple of years, we get
a bit of snow, but it does not last long. Usually in the winter it rains
more. I do not understand why it snows here, now, when it is summer."
"Because of the elevation," Richard answered idly as he studied the
rising slopes to each side.
Higher yet, the snowpack was thick, and in places, where the wind blew
drifts into overhangs, it would be treacherous. Trying to cross such
precipitous, snow-covered slopes would be perilous, at best. Fortunately,
they were nearing the highest point they would have to climb to make it over
the pass, so they wouldn't have to traverse heavy snow. The bitterly cold
wind, though, was making them all miserable.
"I want to know what that thing is," Richard finally said, gesturing up
at the statue on the rise. He looked around at the others to see if anyone
objected. No one did. "And, I want to know why it's there."
"Do you think we should wait for dark?" Cara asked. "Darkness will hide
us better."
Richard shook his head. "The races must be able to see pretty well in
the dark--after all, that's when they hunt. If given a choice, I'd rather be
in the open during the daylight, when I can see them coming."
Richard hooked his bow under his leg and bent it enough to attach the
bowstring. He drew an arrow from the leather quiver over his shoulder and
nocked it, holding it at rest against the bow with his left hand. He scanned
the sky, checking the clouds, and looking for any sign of the races. He
wasn't entirely sure about the shadows among the trees, but the sky was
clear of races.
"I think we'd better be on our way." Richard's gaze swept across all
their faces, first, making sure they were paying attention. "Walk on the
rocks if at all possible. I don't want to leave a trail behind in the snow
that Nicholas could spot through the eyes of the races."
Nodding their understanding, they all followed after him, in single
file, out onto the rocks. Owen, in front of the ever-watchful Mord-Sith,
kept a wary eye toward the sky. Jennsen and Betty watched the woods to the
sides. In the strong gusts, they all hunched against the wind and the
stinging bite of icy crystals hitting their faces. In the thin air it was
tiring climbing up the steep incline. Richard's legs burned with the effort.
His lungs burned with the poison.
By the look of the sheer walls of rock rising up into broken clouds to
either side, Richard didn't see any way, other than the pass, for people to
make it over the imposing mountains, at least, not without a journey of
tremendous difficulty, hardship, and probably a great loss of life. Even
then, he wasn't really certain that it was even possible.
In places, as they trudged up the edge of the steep rise, he could see
back through gaps in the rock walls of the mountains, under the dark bottom
of clouds, to sunlight beyond the pass.
None of them spoke as they climbed. From time to time they had to pause
to catch their breath. They all kept an eye to the churning sky.
Richard spotted a few small birds in the distance, but nothing of any
size.
As they approached the top, following a zigzagging course so they could
more easily make it up without having to scale rock faces of jutting ledges,
Richard caught glimpses of the statue sitting on a massive base of granite.
From the high vantage point in the pass, he could now see that the rock
on either side of the rise fell away in precipitous drops. The gorge at the
bottom of either side dead-ended at vertical climbs of what would have to be
thousands of feet. Whatever routes might have branched off lower down, they
would have to converge before going up this rise; by the lay of the land, it
became clear to him that this was the only way to make it through this
entire section of the pass.
He realized that anyone approaching Bandakar by this route would have
to climb this ridge in the rise, and they would unavoidably come upon the
monument.
As he mounted the final cut between the snow-dusted boulders standing
twice his height, Richard was able at last to take in the entire statue
guarding the pass.
And guarding the pass it was. This was a sentinel.
The noble figure sitting atop a vast stone base was seated as he
watchfully guarded the pass. In one hand the figure casually held a sword at
the ready, its point resting on the ground. He appeared to be wearing
leather armor, with his cape resting over his lap. The vigilant pose of the
sentinel gave it a resolute presence. The clear impression was that this
figure was set to ward what was beyond.
The stone was worn by centuries of weather, but that weathering failed
to wear away the power of the carving. This figure was carved, and it was
placed, with great purpose. That it was out in the middle of nowhere, at the
summit of a mountain pass no longer traveled and a trail possibly abandoned
after this was set here, made it, to Richard, all the more arresting.
He had carved stone, and he knew what had gone into this. It was not
what he would call fine work, but it was powerfully executed. Just looking
at it gave him goose bumps.
"At least it doesn't look like you," Kahlan said.
At least there was that.
But this thing being there all alone for what very well might have been
thousands of years was worrisome.
"What I'd like to know," Richard said to her, "is why this second
beacon was down there, down the hill, in that cave, and not up here."
Kahlan shared a telling look with him. "If Jennsen hadn't done what she
did, you would never have found it."
Richard walked around the base of the statue, searching--for what he
didn't know. Almost as soon as he started looking, he saw, on the front of
the base, on the top of one of the decorative moldings, an odd void in the
snow. It looked as if something had been sitting there and had then been
taken away. It was a track, of sorts, a telltale.
Richard thought the barren spot looked familiar. He pulled the warning
beacon from his pack and checked the shape of the bottom. His thought
confirmed, he placed the figure of himself in the void in the snow collected
on the rim of the base. It was a perfect fit.
The little figure had been here, with this statue.
"How do you think it came to be down in the cave?" Cara asked in a
suspicious voice.
"Maybe it fell," Jennsen offered. "It's pretty windy up here. Maybe the
wind blew it off and it tumbled down the hill."
"And just managed to roll through the woods without being stopped by a
tree, and then, neat as can be," Richard said, "roll right into the small
opening of the cave, and then just happened to come to be stuck in the rock
right near where you, by coincidence, ended up stuck. Stuck, I might add, in
a terrifying place you aren't terrified of."
Jennsen blinked in wonder. "When you put it like that. . ."
Standing at the crown of the pass, in front of the statue right where
the warning beacon would have rested, and now again rested, Richard could
see that the spot held a commanding view of the approach to Bandakar. The
mountains blocking off the view to either side were as formidable as
anything he'd ever seen. The rise where the sentinel sat overlooked the
approach into the pass back between those towering, snowcapped peaks. As
high as they were, they were still only at the foothills of those mountains.
The statue was not looking ahead, as might be expected of a guardian,
but rather, its unflinching gaze was fixed a little to the right. Richard
thought that was a bit odd. He wondered if maybe it was meant to show this
sentinel keeping a vigilant eye on everything, on every potential threat.
Standing as he was, directly in front of the statue's base, in front of
where the warning beacon sat, Richard looked to the right, in the direction
the man in the statue was looking.
He could see the approach of the pass up through the mountains. Farther
out, in the distance, he could see vast forests to the west, and beyond
that, the low, barren mountains they had crossed.
And, he could see a gap in those mountains.
The eyes of the man in the statue were resolutely fixed upon what
Richard now saw.
"Dear spirits," he whispered.
"What is it?" Kahlan asked. "What do you see?"
"The Pillars of Creation."
Kahlan, standing beside Richard, squinted into the distance. From the
base of the statue they had a commanding view of the approaches from the
west. It seemed as if she could see half a world away. But she couldn't see
what he saw.
"I can't see the Pillars of Creation," she said.
Richard leaned close, having her sight down his arm where he pointed.
"There. That darker depression in the expanse of flat ground."
Richard's eyes were better at seeing distant things than were hers. It
was all rather hazy-looking, being so far away.
"You can recognize where it lies by the landmarks, there"--he pointed
off to the right, and then a little to the left--"and there. Those darker
mountains in the distance that are a little higher than the rest have a
unique shape. They serve as good reference points so you can find things."
"Now that you point them out, I can see the land where we traveled
from. I recognize those mountains."
It seemed amazing, looking back on where they'd been, how high they
were. She could see, spread out into the distance, the vast wasteland beyond
the barren mountain range and, even if she couldn't make out the details of
the dreadful place, she could see the darker depression in the valley. That
depression she knew to be the Pillars of Creation.
"Owen," Richard asked, "how far is this pass from your men--the men who
were hiding with you in the hills?"
Owen looked baffled by the question. "But Lord Rahl, I have never been
up this portion of the pass before. I have never seen this statue. I have
never been anywhere close to here before. It would be impossible for me to
tell such a thing."
"Not impossible," Richard said. "If you know what your home is like,
you should be able to recognize landmarks around it--just as I was able to
look out to the west and see the route we traveled to get here. Look around
at those mountains back through the pass and see if you recognize anything."
Owen, looking skeptical, walked the rest of the way up behind the
statue and peered off to the east. He stood in the wind for a time, staring.
He pointed at a mountain in the distance, through the pass.
"I think I know that place." He sounded astonished. "I know the shape
of that mountain. It looks a little different from this spot, but I think
it's the same place I know." He shielded his eyes from the gusts of wind as
he gazed to the east. He pointed again. "And that place! I know that place,
too!"
He rushed back to Richard. "You were right, Lord Rahl. I can see places
I know." He stared off then as he whispered to himself. "I can tell where my
home is, even though I've not been here. Just by seeing places I know."
Kahlan had never seen anyone so astounded by something so simple.
"So," Richard finally prompted, "how far do you think your men are from
here?"
Owen looked back over his shoulder. "Through that low place, then
around that slope coming from the right..." He turned back to Richard. "We
have been hiding in the land near where the seal on our empire used to be,
where no one ever goes because it is near the place where death stalks, near
the pass. I would guess maybe a full day's steady walk from here." He
suddenly turned hesitant. "But I am wrong to be confident of what my eyes
tell me. I may just be seeing what my mind wants me to see. It may not be
real."
Richard folded his arms and leaned back against the granite base of the
statue as he gazed out toward the Pillars of Creation, ignoring
Owen's doubt. Knowing Richard as she did, Kahlan imagined that he must
be considering his options.
Standing beside him, she was about to lean back against the stone of
the statue's base, but instead paused to first brush the snow off from
beside where the warning beacon rested. As she brushed the snow away, she
saw that there were words carved in the top of the decorative molding.
"Richard . .. look at this."
He turned to see what she saw, and then started hurriedly brushing away
more of the snow. The others crowded around, trying to see what was written
in the stone of the statue's base. Cara, on the other side of Richard, ran
her hand all the way to the end to clean off the entire ledge.
Kahlan couldn't read it. It was in another language she didn't know,
but thought she recognized.
"High D'Haran?" Cara asked.
Richard nodded his confirmation as he studied the words. "This must be
a very old dialect," he said, half to himself as he scrutinized it, trying
to figure it out. "It's not just an old dialect, but one with which I'm not
familiar. Maybe because this is so distant a place."
"What does it say?" Jennsen wanted to know as she peered around
Richard, between him and Kahlan. "Can you translate it?"
"It's difficult to work it out," Richard mumbled. He swiped his hair
back with one hand as he ran the fingers of his other lightly over the
words.
He finally straightened and glanced up at Owen, standing to the side of
the base, watching.
Everyone waited while Richard looked down at the words again. "I'm not
sure," he finally said. "The phraseology is odd. . .." He looked up at
Kahlan. "I can't be sure. I've not seen High D'Haran written this way
before. I feel like I should know what it says, but I can't quite get it."
Kahlan didn't know if he really couldn't be sure, or if he didn't want
to speak the translation in front of the others.
"Well, maybe if you think it over for a while, it might come to you,"
she offered, trying to give him a way of putting it off for the time being
if he wanted to.
Richard didn't take her offer. Instead, he tapped a finger to the words
on the left of the warning beacon. "This part is a little more clear to me.
I think it says something like Tear any breach of this seal to the empire
beyond ...' "
He wiped a hand across his mouth as he considered the rest of the
words. "I'm not so sure about the rest of it," he finally said. "It seems to
say, 'for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.' "
"Of course," Jennsen muttered in angry comprehension.
Richard raked his fingers back through his hair. "I'm not at all sure I
have it right. Something about it still doesn't make sense. I'm not sure I
have it right."
"You have it perfectly right," Jennsen said. "Those who cannot see
magic. This was placed by the gifted who sealed those people away from the
rest of the world because of how they were born." Her fiery eyes filled with
tears. "Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond, for beyond is
evil--those who cannot see magic. That's what it means, those who cannot see
magic."
No one argued with her. The only sound was the rush of the wind across
the open ground.
Richard spoke softly to her. "I'm not sure that's it, Jenn."
She folded her arms and turned away, glaring out toward the Pillars of
Creation.
Kahlan could understand how she felt. Kahlan knew what it was like to
be shunned by almost everyone except those who were like you. Confessors
were thought of as monsters by many people. Given the chance, Kahlan was
sure that much of the rest of humanity would be happy to seal her away for
being a Confessor.
But just because she could understand how Jennsen felt, that didn't
mean Kahlan thought the young woman was right. Jennsen's anger at those who
banished these people was justified, but her anger at Richard and the rest
of them for having the same spark of the gift, which made them in that way
the same, was not.
Richard turned his attention to Owen. "How many men do you have waiting
in the hills for you to return?"
"Not quite a hundred."
Richard sighed in disappointment. "Well, if that's all you have, then
that's all you have. We'll have to see to getting more later.
"For now, I want you to go get those men. Bring them here, to me. We'll
wait here for you to return. This will be our base from where we work a plan
to get the Order out of Bandakar. We'll set up a camp down there, in those
trees, where it's well protected."
Owen looked down the incline to where Richard pointed, and then off
toward his homeland. His confused frown returned to Richard. "But, Lord
Rahl, it is you who must give us freedom. Why not just come with me to the
men, if you want to see them?"
"Because I think this will be a safer place than where they are now,
where the Order probably knows they're hiding."
"But the Order does not know that there are men hiding, or where they
are."
"You're deluding yourselves. The men in the Order are brutal, but they
aren't stupid."
"If they really know where the men are, then why hasn't the Order come
to call them in?"
"They will," Richard said. "When it suits them, they will. Your men
aren't a threat, so the men of the Order are in no hurry to expend any
effort to capture them. Sooner or later they will, though, because they
won't want anyone to think they can escape the Order's rule.
"I want your men away from there, to a place they've not been: here. I
want the Order to think they're gone, to think they've run away, so they
won't go after them."
"Well," Owen said, thinking it over, "I guess that would be all right."
Tom stood watch near the far corner of the statue's base, giving
Jennsen room to be alone. She looked angry and he looked like he thought it
best just to leave her be. Tom looked as if he felt guilty for having been
born with the spark of the gift that allowed him to see magic, that same
spark possessed by those who had banished people like Jennsen.
"Tom," Richard said, "I want you to go with Owen."
Jennsen's arms came unfolded as she turned toward Richard. "Why do you
want him to go?" She suddenly sounded a lot less angry.
"That's right," Owen said. "Why should he go?"
"Because," Richard said, "I want to make sure that you and your men get
back here. I need the antidote, remember? The more men I have back here with
me who know where it is, the better. I want them safely away from the Order
for now. With blond hair and blue eyes, Tom will fit in with your people. If
you run into any soldiers from the Order they will think he's one of you.
Tom will make sure you all get back here."
"But it could be dangerous," Jennsen objected.
Richard fixed her in his challenging stare. He didn't say anything. He
simply waited to see if she would dare to attempt to justify her objections.
Finally, she broke eye contact and looked away.
"I guess it makes sense, though," she finally admitted.
Richard turned his attention back to Tom. "I want you to see if you can
bring back some supplies. And I'd like to use your hatchet while you're
gone, if that's all right."
Tom nodded and pulled his hatchet from his pack. As Richard stepped
closer to take the axe, he started ticking off a list of things he wanted
the man to look for--specific tools, yew wood, hide glue, packthread,
leather, and a list of other things Kahlan couldn't hear.
Tom hooked his thumbs behind his belt. "All right. I doubt I'll find it
all right off. Do you want me to search out what I can't find before I
return?"
"No. I need it all, but I need those men back here more. Get what's
readily available and then get back here with Owen and his men as soon as
possible."
"I'll get what I can. When do you want us to leave?"
"Now. We don't have a moment to lose."
"Now?" Owen sounded incredulous. "It will be dark in an hour or two."
"Those couple of hours may be hours I need," Richard said. "Don't waste
them."
Kahlan thought that he meant because of the poison, but he could have
had the gift in mind. She could see how much pain he was in because of the
headache caused by the gift. She ached to hold him, to comfort him, to make
him better, but she couldn't make it all just go away; they had to find the
solutions. She glanced at the small figure of Richard standing on the base
of the statue. Half of that figure was as dark as a night stone, as dark and
dead as the deepest part of the underworld itself.
Tom swung his pack up over his shoulder. "Take care of them for me,
will you, Cara?" he asked with a wink. She smiled her agreement. "I'll see
you all in a few days, then." He waved his farewell, his gaze lingering on
Jennsen, before shepherding Owen around the statue and toward the man's
homeland.
Cara folded her arms and leveled a look at Jennsen. "You're a fool if
you don't go kiss him a good journey."
Jennsen hesitated, her eyes turning toward Richard.
"I've learned not to argue with Cara," Richard said.
Jennsen smiled and ran over the ridge to catch Tom before he was gone.
Betty, at the end of a long rope, scampered to follow after.
Richard stuffed the small figure of himself into his pack before
picking up his bow from where it leaned against the statue. "We'd better get
down into the trees and set up a camp."
Richard, Kahlan, and Cara started down the rise toward the concealing
safety of the huge pines. They had been long enough out in the open, as far
as Kahlan was concerned. It was only a matter of time before the races came
in search of them--before Nicholas came looking for them.
As cold as it was up in the pass, Kahlan knew they didn't dare build a
fire; the races could spot the smoke and then find them. They needed instead
to build a snug shelter. Kahlan wished they could find a wayward pine to
protect and hide them for the night, but she had not seen any of those down
in the Old World and wishing wasn't going to grow one.
As she stepped carefully on dry patches of rock, avoiding the snow so
as not to leave tracks, she checked the dark clouds. It was always possible
that it might warm just a little and that the precipitation could turn to
rain. Even if it didn't, it still would be a miserably cold night.
Jennsen, Betty following behind, returned, catching up with them as
they zigzagged down through the steep notches of ledge. The wind was getting
colder, the snow a little heavier.
When they reached a flatter spot, Jennsen caught Richard's arm.
"Richard, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be angry with you. I know you didn't
banish those people. I know it's not your fault." She gathered up the slack
on Betty's rope, looping it into coils. "It just makes me angry that those
people were treated like that. I'm like them, and so it makes me angry."
"The way they were treated should make you angry," Richard said as he
started away, "but not because you share an attribute with them."
Taken aback by his words, even looking a little hurt, Jennsen didn't
move. "What do you mean?"
Richard paused and turned back to her. "That's how the Imperial Order
thinks. That's how Owen's people think. It's a belief in granting
disembodied prestige, or the mantle of guilt, to all those who share some
specific trait or attribute.
"The Imperial Order would like you to believe that your virtue, your
ultimate value, or even your wickedness, arises entirely from being born a
member of a given group, that free will itself is either impotent or
nonexistent. They want you to believe that all people are merely
interchangeable members of groups that share fixed, preordained
characteristics, and they are predestined to live through a collective
identity, the group will, unable to rise on individual merit because there
can be no such thing as independent, individual merit, only group merit.
"They believe that people can only rise above their station in life
when selected to be awarded recognition because their group is due an
indulgence, and so a representative, a stand-in for the group, must be
selected to be awarded the badge of self-worth. Only the reflected light off
this badge, they believe, can bring the radiance of self-worth to others of
their group.
"But those granted this badge live with the uneasy knowledge that it's
only an illusion of competence. It never brings any sincere self-respect
because you can't fool yourself. Ultimately, because it is counterfeit, the
sham of esteem granted because of a connection with a group can only be
propped up by force.
"This belittling of mankind, the Order's condemnation of everyone and
everything human, is their transcendent judgment of man's inadequacy.
"When you direct your anger at me for having a trait borne by someone
else, you pronounce me guilty for their crimes. That's what happens when
people say I'm a monster because our father was a monster. If you admire
someone simply because you believe their group is deserving, then you
embrace the same corrupt ethics.
"The Imperial Order says that no individual should have the right to
achieve something on his own, to accomplish what someone else cannot, and so
magic must be stripped from mankind. They say that accomplishment is corrupt
because it is rooted in the evil of self-interest, therefore the fruits of
that accomplishment are tainted by its evil. This is why they preach that
any gain must be sacrificed to those who have not earned it. They hold that
only through such sacrifice can those fruits be purified and made good.
"We believe, on the other hand, that your own individual life is the
value and its own end, and what you achieve is yours.
"Only you can achieve self-worth for yourself. Any group offering it to
you, or demanding it of you, comes bearing chains of slavery."
Jennsen stared at him for a long moment. A smile finally overcame her.
"That's why, then, I always wanted to be accepted for who I was, for myself,
and always thought it unfair to be persecuted because of how I was born?"
"That's why," Richard said. "If you want to be proud of yourself
because of what you accomplish, then don't allow yourself to be chained to
some group, and don't in turn chain other individuals to one. Let your
judgment of individuals be earned.
"This means I should not be hated because my father was evil, nor
should I be admired because my grandfather is good. I have the right to live
my own life, for my own benefit. You are Jennsen Rahl, and your life is what
you, alone, make of it."
They made the rest of the way down the hill in silence. Jennsen still
had a faraway look as she thought about what Richard had said.
When they reached the trees, Kahlan was relieved to get in under the
sheltering limbs of the ancient pines and even more so when they entered the
secluded protection of the lower, thicker balsam trees. They made their way
through dense thickets into the quiet solitude of the towering trees, and
farther down the slope, to a place where an outcropping of rock offered
protection from the elements. It would be easier to construct a shelter in
such a place by leaning boughs against it in order to make a relatively warm
shelter.
Richard used Tom's hatchet to cut some stout poles from young pines in
the understory which he placed against the rock wall. While he lashed the
poles together with wiry lengths of pine roots he pulled up from the mossy
ground, Kahlan, Jennsen, and Cara started collecting boughs to make dry
bedding and to cover over the shelter.
"Richard," Jennsen asked as she dragged a bundle of balsam close to the
shelter, "how do you think you are going to rid Bandakar of the Imperial
Order?"
Richard laid a heavy bough up high on the poles and tied it in place
with a length of the wiry pine root. "I don't know that I can. My primary
concern is to get to the antidote."
Jennsen looked a bit surprised. "But aren't you going to help those
people?"
He glanced back over his shoulder at her. "They poisoned me. No matter
how you dress it up, they're willing to murder me if I don't do as they
wish--if I don't do their dirty work for them. They think we're savages, and
they're above us. They don't think our lives are worth as much--because we
are not members of their group. My first responsibility is to my own life,
to getting that antidote."
"I see what you mean." Jennsen handed him another balsam bough. "But I
still think that if we eliminate the Order there, and this Nicholas, we'll
be helping ourselves."
Richard smiled. "I can agree with that, and we're going to do what we
can. But to truly help them, I need to convince Owen and his men that they
must help themselves."
Cara snorted a derisive laugh. "That will be a good trick, teaching the
lambs to become the wolves."
Kahlan agreed. She thought that convincing Owen and his men to defend
themselves would be more difficult than the five of them ridding Bandakar of
the Imperial Order by themselves. She wondered what Richard had in mind.
"Well," Jennsen said, "since we're all in this, all going to face the
Order up in Bandakar, don't you think that I have a right to know
everything? To know what you two are always making eyes at each other about
and whispering about?"
Richard stared at Jennsen a moment before he looked back at Kahlan.
Kahlan laid her bundle of branches down near the shelter. "I think
she's right."
Richard looked unhappy about it, but finally nodded and set down the
balsam bough he was holding. "Almost two years ago, Jagang managed to find a
way to use magic to start a plague. The plague itself was not magic; it was
just the plague. It swept through cities killing people by the tens of
thousands. Since the firestorm had been started with a spark of magic, I
found a way to stop the plague, using magic."
Kahlan did not believe that such a nightmare could be reduced to such a
simple statement and even begin to adequately convey the horror they had
gone through. But by the look on Jennsen's face, she at least grasped a
little bit of the terror that had gripped the land.
"In order for Richard to return from the place where he had to go to
stop the plague," Kahlan said, leaving out terrible portions of the story,
"he had to take the infection of plague. Had he not, he would have lived,
but lived alone for the rest of his life and died alone without ever seeing
me or anyone else again. He took the plague into himself so that he could
come back and tell me he loved me."
Jennsen stared, wide-eyed. "Didn't you know he loved you?"
Kahlan smiled a small bitter smile. "Don't you think your mother would
come back from the world of the dead to tell you she loves you, even though
you know she does?"
"Yes, I suppose she would. But why would you have to become infected
just to return? And return from where?"
"It was a place, called the Temple of the Winds, that was partially in
the underworld." Richard gestured up the pass. "Something like that boundary
was part of the world of the dead but was still here, in this world. You
might say that the Temple of the Winds was something like that. It was
hidden within the underworld. Because I had to cross a boundary of sorts,
through the underworld, the spirits set a price for me to return to the
world of life."
"Spirits? You saw spirits there?" Jennsen asked. When Richard nodded,
she asked, "Why would they set such a price?"
"The spirit who set the price of my return was Darken Rahl."
Jennsen's jaw dropped.
"When we found Lord Rahl," Cara said, "he was almost dead. The Mother
Confessor went on a dangerous journey through the sliph, all alone, to find
what would cure him. She succeeded in bringing it back, but Lord Rahl was
moments away from death."
"I used the magic I recovered," Kahlan said. "It was something that had
the power to reverse the plague that the magic had given him. The magic I
invoked to do this was the three chimes."
"Three chimes?" Jennsen asked. "What are they?"
"The chimes are underworld magic. Summoning their assistance keeps a
person from crossing over into the world of the dead.
"Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, at the time I didn't know
anything else about the chimes. It turns out that they were created during
the great war to end magic. The chimes are beings of sorts, but without
souls. They come from the underworld. They annul magic in this world."
Jennsen looked confused. "But how can they accomplish such a thing?"
"I don't know how they work, exactly. But their presence in this world,
since they are part of the world of the dead, begins the destruction of
magic."
"Can't you get rid of the chimes? Can't you find a way to send them
back?"
"I already did that," Richard said. "But while they were here, in this
world, magic began to fail."
"Apparently," Kahlan said, "what I began that day when I called the
chimes into the world of life began a cascade of events that continues to
progress, even though the chimes have been sent back to the underworld."
"We don't know that," Richard said, more to Kahlan than to Jennsen.
"Richard is right," Kahlan told Jennsen, "we don't know it for sure,
but we have good reason to believe it's true. This boundary locking away
Bandakar failed. The timing would suggest that it failed not long after I
freed the chimes. One of those mistakes I told you about, before. Remember?"
Jennsen, staring at Kahlan, finally nodded. "But you didn't do it to
hurt people. You didn't know it would happen. You didn't know how this
boundary would fail, how the Order would go in there and abuse those
people."
"Doesn't really make any difference, does it? I did it. I caused it.
Because of me, magic may be failing. I accomplished what the Order is
working so hard to bring about. As a result of what I did, all those people
in Bandakar died, and others are now out in the world where they will once
again do as they did in ancient times--they will begin breeding the gift out
of mankind.
"We stand at the brink of the end times of magic, all because of me,
because of what I did."
Jennsen stood frozen. "And so you regret what you caused? That you may
have done something that will end magic?"
Kahlan felt Richard's arm around her waist. "I only know a world with
magic," she finally said. "I became the Mother Confessor--in part--to help
protect people with magic who are unable to protect themselves. I, too, am a
creature of magic--it's inextricably bound into me. I know profoundly
beautiful things of magic that I love; they are a part of the world of
life."
"So you fear you may have caused the end of what you love most."
"Not love most." Kahlan smiled. "I became the Mother Confessor because
I believe in laws that protect all people, give all individuals the right to
their own life. I would not want an artist's ability to sculpt to be
stopped, or a singer's voice to be silenced, or a person's mind to be
stilled. Nor do I want people's ability to achieve what they can with magic
to be stripped from them.
"Magic itself is not the central issue, not what this is about. I want
all the flowers, in all their variety, to have a chance to bloom. You are
beautiful, too, Jennsen. I would not choose to lose you, either. Each person
has a right to life. The idea that there must be a choice of one over
another is counter to what we believe."
Jennsen smiled at Kahlan's hand on her cheek. "Well, I guess that in a
world without magic, I could be queen."
On her way by with balsam boughs, Cara said, "Queens, too, must bow to
the Mother Confessor. Don't forget it."
Light flooded in as the lid of the box suddenly lifted. The rusty
hinges groaned in protest of every inch the lid rose. Zedd squinted at the
abrupt, blinding light of day. Beefy arms flipped the hinged lid back. If
there had been any slack in the chain around his neck, Zedd would have
jumped at the booming bang when the heavy cover flopped back, showering him
in dirt and rusty grit.
Between the bright light and the dust swirling through the air, Zedd
could hardly see. It didn't help, either, that the short chain around his
neck was bolted to the center of the floor of the box, leaving only enough
slack for him to be able to lift his head a few inches. With his arms bound
in iron behind his back, he could do little more than lie on the floor.
While Zedd was forced to lie there on his side, his neck near the iron
bolt, he at least could breathe in the sudden rush of cooler air. The heat
in the box had been sweltering. On a couple of occasions, when they had
stopped at night, they had given him a cup of water. It had not been nearly
enough. He and Adie had been fed precious little, but it was water he needed
more than food. Zedd felt like he might die of thirst. He could hardly think
of anything but water.
He had lost track of the number of days he had been chained to the
floor of the box, but he was somewhat surprised to find himself still alive.
The box had been bouncing around in the back of a wagon over the course of a
long, rough, but swift journey. He could only assume that he was being taken
to Emperor Jagang. He was also sure that he would be sorry if he was still
alive at the end of the journey.
There had been times, in the stifling heat of the box, when he had
expected that he would soon fade into unconsciousness and die. There were
times when he longed to die. He was sure that falling into such a fatal
sleep would be far preferable to what was in store for him. He had no
choice, though; the control the Sister exerted through the Rada'Han
prevented him from strangling himself to death with the chain, and it was
pretty hard, he had discovered, to will himself to die.
Zedd, his head still held to the floor of the box by the stub of chain,
tried to peer up, but he could see only sky. He heard another lid bang open.
He coughed as another cloud of dust drifted over him. When he heard Adie's
cough, he didn't know if he was relieved to know that she, too, was still
alive, or sorry that she was, knowing what she, like he, would have to
endure.
Zedd was, in a way, ready for the torture he knew he would be subjected
to. He was a wizard and had passed tests of pain. He feared such torture,
but he would endure it until it finally ended his life. In his weakened
condition, he expected that it wouldn't take all that long. In a way, such a
time under torture was like an old acquaintance come back to haunt him.
But he feared the torture of Adie far more than his own. He hated above
all else the torture of others. He hated to think of her coming under such
treatment.
The wagon shuddered as the front of the other box dropped open. A cry
escaped Adie's throat when a man struck her.
"Move, you stupid old woman, so I can get at the lock!"
Zedd could hear Adie's shoes scraping the wooden crate as, hands bound
behind her back, she tried to comply. By the sounds of fists on flesh, the
man wasn't happy with her efforts. Zedd closed his eyes, wishing he could
close his ears as well.
The front of Zedd's confining box crashed open, letting in more light
and dust. A shadow fell across him as a man approached. Because his face was
pinned to the floor by the chain, Zedd couldn't see the man.
A big hand reached in, fitting a key to the lock. Zedd kept his head
stretched as far away as possible to give the man all the room available to
let him do his work. Such effort earned Zedd a heavy punch in the side of
his head. The blow left his ears ringing.
The lock finally sprang open. The man's big fist seized Zedd by the
hair and dragged him, like a sack of grain, out of the box and toward the
rear of the wagon. Zedd pressed his lips together, to keep from crying out
as his bones bumped over protruding wooden runners in the wagon bed. At the
back edge of the wagon he was summarily dumped off the back to slam down
onto the ground.
Ears ringing, head spinning, Zedd tried to sit up when he was kicked,
knowing it was a command. He spat out dirt. With his hands tied behind his
back he was having difficulty complying. After three kicks, a big man
grabbed him by the hair and lifted him upright.
Zedd's heart sank to see that they sat among an army of astounding
size. The dark mass of humanity blighted the land as far as he could see.
So, it would seem, they had arrived.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Adie sitting in the dirt beside
him, her head hanging. She had a livid bruise on her cheek. She didn't look
up when a shadow fell across her.
A woman in a long drab skirt moved in before them, distracting him from
his appraisal of the enemy forces. Zedd recognized the brown wool dress. It
was the Sister of the Dark who had put the collar around their necks. He
didn't know her name; she'd never offered it. In fact, she hadn't spoken to
them since they were chained in their boxes. She stood over them, now, like
the strict governess of incorrigible children.
The ring through her lower lip, marking her as a slave, in Zedd's mind
irrevocably tarnished her air of authority.
The ground was covered with horse manure, most, but not all, old and
dried. Out beyond the Sister, horses stood picketed seemingly without any
order among the soldiers. Horses that looked like they might belong to the
cavalry were well kept. Workhorses were not so healthy. Among the horses and
men, wagons and stacks of supplies dotted the late-day landscape.
The place had the foul stink of shallow latrines, horses, manure, and
the filthy smell of crowded human habitation failing to meet common sanitary
needs. Zedd blinked when acrid woodsmoke from one of the thousands of cook
fires drifted across him, burning his eyes.
The air was also thick with mosquitoes, gnats, and flies. The flies
were the worst. The mosquito bites would itch later, but the flies stung the
instant they bit, and with his arms bound behind his back, there wasn't much
he could do about it other than shake his head to try to keep them out of
his eyes and nose.
The two soldiers who had freed Zedd and Adie from their boxes stood
patiently to the sides. Beyond the woman's skirts a vast encampment spread
out as far as the eye could see. There were men everywhere, men engaged in
work, at rest, and at recreation. They were dressed in every variety of
clothing, from leather armor, chain mail, and studded belts to hides, dirty
tunics, and trousers in the process of rotting into rags. Most of the men
were unshaven, and all were as filthy as feral recluses living in mad
seclusion. The mass encampment generated a constant din of yells, whistles,
men hollering and laughing, the jangle and rattle of metal, the ring of
hammers or rhythm of saws, and, piercing through it all, the occasional cry
of someone in agonizing pain.
Tents by the thousands, tents of all sorts, like leaves after a big
wind, lay littering the gently rolling landscape at the foothills of
towering mountains to the east. Many a tent was decorated with loot; gingham
curtains hung at an entrance, a small chair or table sat before a tent, here
and there an item of women's personal clothing flew as a flag of conquest.
Wagons and horses and gear were all jammed together among the rabble in no
seeming plan. The ground had been churned to a fine dust by the masses in
this mock city devoid of skeletal order.
The place was a nightmare of humanity reduced to the savagery of a mob
on the loose, the scope of their goals no more than the impulse of the
moment. Though their leaders had ends, these men did not.
"His Excellency has requested you both," the Sister said down to them.
Neither Zedd nor Adie said anything. The men hauled them both to their
feet. A sharp shove started them moving behind the Sister after she marched
away. Zedd noticed, then, that there were more soldiers, close to a dozen,
escorting them.
The wagon had delivered them to the end of a road, of sorts, that ran a
winding course through the sprawling encampment. The end of the road, where
wagons sat in a row, appeared to be the entrance to an inner camp, probably
a command area. The regular soldiers outside a ring of heavily armed guards
ate, played dice, gambled, bartered loot, joked, talked, and drank as they
watched the prisoners being escorted.
The thought occurred to Zedd that if he called out, proclaiming that he
was the one who was responsible for the light spell that had killed or
wounded so many of their chums, maybe the men would riot, set upon them, and
kill them before Jagang had a chance to do his worst.
Zedd opened his mouth to try out his plan, but saw the Sister glance
back over her shoulder. He discovered that his voice was muted through her
control of the collar around his neck. There would be no speaking unless she
allowed it.
Following the Sister, they walked past the standing row of wagons in
front of the one that had brought them. There were well over a dozen freight
wagons all lined up before the cordoned-off area with the larger tents. None
of the wagons were empty, but all were loaded with crates.
With sinking realization, Zedd understood. These were wagons with goods
looted from the Wizard's Keep. These were all wagons that had made the
journey with them. They were all full of the things those ungifted men, at
the Sister's orders, had taken out of the Keep. Zedd feared to think what
priceless items of profound danger sat in these crates. There were things in
the Keep that became hazardous to anyone should they be removed from the
shields that guarded them. There were rare items that, if removed from their
protective environment, such as darkness, for even a brief time, would cease
to be viable.
Guards in layered hides, mail, leather, and armed with pikes set with
long steel points flanked by sharpened winged blades, huge crescent axes,
swords, and spiked maces prowled the restricted area. These grim soldiers
were bigger and more menacing-looking than the regular men out in the
camp--and those were fearsome enough. While the special guards patrolled,
ever watchful, the unconcerned regular soldiers just outside the perimeter
carried on with their business.
The guards led the Sister, Zedd, and Adie through an opening in a line
of spiked barricades. Beyond were the smaller of the special tents. Most
were round and the same size. Zedd thought that these were probably the
tents of the staff the emperor would keep close, his attendants and personal
slaves. Zedd wondered if the Sisters were all held within the emperor's
compound.
Up ahead, the palatial vision of the grand tents of an emperor and his
entourage rose up in the late-afternoon light. No doubt some of these
comfortable tents set about the center compound, within the ring of tents
for servants and attendants, were accommodations for high-ranking officers,
officials, and the emperor's most trusted advisors.
Zedd wished he had a light spell and the ability to ignite it. He could
probably decapitate the Imperial Order right then and there.
But he knew that such confusion and turmoil would only be a temporary
setback for the Imperial Order. They would provide another brute to enforce
their message. It would take more than killing Jagang to end the threat of
the Order. He wasn't even sure anymore just what it would take to free the
world of the oppression and tyranny of the Imperial Order.
Despite the seductively simplistic notions held by most people, the
Emperor Jagang was not the driving force of this invasion. The driving force
was a vicious ideology. To exist, it could not permit successful lives to be
lived in sight of the suffering masses produced as a result of the beliefs
and dictates of the Imperial Order. The freedom and resulting success of the
people living in the New World put the lie to all the Order preached. It was
blasphemy to succeed on your own; since the Order taught that it could not
be done, it could only be sinful. Sin had to be eliminated for the greater
good. Therefore, the freedom of the New World had to be crushed.
"These the ones?" a guard with short-cropped hair asked. The rings
hanging from his nose and ears reminded Zedd of a prized pig decorated for
the summer fair. Of course, prized pigs would have been washed and clean and
would have smelled better.
"Yes," the Sister said. "Both of them, as instructed."
With deliberate care the man's dark-eyed gaze took in Adie and then
Zedd. By his scowl, he apparently thought himself a righteous man who was
displeased with what he saw: evil. After noting the collars they both wore,
showing that they would be no danger to the emperor, he stepped aside and
lifted a thumb, directing them through a second barricade beyond the tents
of the attendants, servants, and slaves. The guard's glare followed the
sinners on their way to meet their proper fate.
Other men, from inside the inner compound, swept in to surround them.
Zedd saw that these men wore more orderly outfits. They were layered in
similar leather and mail, wearing heavy leather weapon belts, their chests
crisscrossed with studded straps. There was a uniformity to them, a
sameness, that showed these were special guards. The weapons hung on those
wide belts were better made, and they carried more of them. By the way they
moved, Zedd knew that these were not typical men rounded up to be soldiers,
but trained men with highly developed talents for warfare.
These were the emperor's elite bodyguards.
Zedd looked longingly at the nearly full water bucket set out for the
men standing guard in the heat. It wouldn't do, if you were an emperor, to
have your elite guards falling over from lack of water. Knowing what the
response was likely to be, Zedd didn't ask for a drink. A sidelong glance
showed Adie licking her cracked lips, but she, too, remained silent.
Up a slight rise sat by far the largest and grandest of the tents,
among the impressive but lesser quarters of the emperor's retinue. The
emperor's tent appeared more a traveling palace, actually, than a tent. It
boasted a tri-peaked roof pierced by high poles bearing colorful standards
and flags. Brightly embroidered panels adorned the exterior walls. Red and
yellow banners flapped lazily in the hot, late-day air. Tassels and
streamers all around it made it look like a central gathering tent at a
festival.
A guard flanking a doorway met Zedd's gaze before he lifted aside the
lambskin covered with shields of gold and hammered medallions of silver,
allowing them entrance. One of the other guards stiff-armed Zedd's shoulder,
nearly knocking him sprawling. Zedd staggered through the doorway into the
dimly lit interior, Adie stumbling in after him.
Inside, the raucous noise of the encampment was muted by layers of rich
carpets placed haphazardly. Hundreds of silk and brocade pillows lined the
edge of the floor. Colorfully decorated hangings divided up the murky
interior space and covered the outer walls. Openings overhead, screened with
gauzy material, let in little light but did allow some air to move through
the quiet gloom of the grand tent. It was so dim, in fact, that lamps and
candles were needed.
In the middle of the room, toward the back, sat an ornate chair draped
with rich, red silks. If this was Emperor Jagang's throne, he was not in it.
While guards surrounded Zedd and Adie, keeping them restricted in
place, one of the men went off behind the fabric walls from where a glow of
light came. The guards standing close around Zedd stank of sweat. Their
shoes were caked with manure. For all the sumptuous surroundings doing their
best to simulate a reverent aura, a sacred setting, an abiding barnyard
stench permeated the place. The horse manure and human sweat of the men who
had entered the tent with Zedd and Adie were only making it worse.
The man who had gone behind the walls poked his head back out,
signaling the Sister forward. He whispered to her and then she, too,
disappeared behind the walls.
Zedd stole a look at Adie. Her completely white eyes stared ahead. He
shifted his weight as an excuse to lean toward her and stealthily touched
her shoulder with his, a message of comfort where there could be none. She
returned a slight push; message received, and appreciated. He longed to
embrace her, but knew he probably never would again.
Muffled words could be heard, but the heavy wall hangings muted them so
that Zedd couldn't understand any of it. Had he access to his gift, he would
have been able to hear it all, but the collar cut him off from his ability.
Even so, the nature of the Sister's report, the words, were short and
businesslike.
Those slaves working in the tent at brushing carpets, or polishing fine
vases, or waxing cabinets paid no attention to the people the guards had
brought in, but the sudden, low tone of menace that came from beyond the
wall caused them all to put markedly more attention into their work. While
no doubt prisoners were brought before the emperor often enough, Zedd was
sure that it would not be wise for those working in the grand tent to pay
any notice to the emperor's business.
From beyond the walls composed of woven scenes also came the warm smell
of food. The variety of scents Zedd was able to detect was astonishing. The
stink of the place, though, tended to make the fragrant aromas of meats,
olive oil, garlic, onions, and spices somewhat repugnant.
The Sister stepped out from behind the wall of colorful hangings. The
ring through her lower lip stood out in stark relief against her ashen skin.
She gave a slight nod to the men to either side of the prisoners.
Powerful fingers gripping their arms, Zedd and Adie were ushered toward
the opening and the glow of light beyond.
Dragged to an abrupt halt, Zedd, at last, stood shackled before the
intent glower of the dream walker himself, Emperor Jagang.
Enthroned in an ornately carved high-backed chair behind a grand dining
table, Jagang leaned on both elbows, a goose leg spanning his fingers as he
chewed. Points of candlelight reflecting off the sides of his shaved head
danced as the tendons all the way up through his temples rippled with his
chewing. A thin mustache, growing down from the corners of his mouth and at
the center under his lower lip, moved rhythmically in time with his jaw, as
did the fine chain connected to gold loops in his ear and nose. Greasy goose
fat covering his meaty, ringed fingers glistened in the candlelight and ran
down his bare arms.
From his place behind his table, Jagang casually studied his latest
captives.
Despite the candles set about the table and on stands to either side,
the inside of the tent had the murky feel of a dungeon.
To each side of him on the broad table sat plates of food, goblets,
bottles, candles, bowls, and, here and there, books and scrolls. There being
no room for all of the silver platters among the multitude, some of them had
to be strategically balanced atop small decorated pillars. There looked to
be enough food for a small army.
For all the Order's talk of sacrifice for the betterment of mankind
being their noble cause, Zedd knew that such abundance at the emperor's
table was meant to send a contradictory message, even when there was no one
but the emperor himself to see it.
Slaves stood lined up along the wall behind Jagang, some holding
additional platters, some in stiff poses, all awaiting command. Some of
those in back were young men--young wizards, from what Zedd had
heard--dressed in loose-fitting white trousers and nothing else. This was
where wizards in training at the Palace of the Prophets had ended up, along
with the captured Sisters who had been their teachers. All were now captives
of the dream walker. The most accomplished of men, men with enormous
potential, were used as houseboys to perform menial tasks. This, too, was a
message sent by the emperor of the Imperial Order to show everyone that the
best and the brightest were to be used to clean chamber pots, while brutes
ruled them.
The younger women, Sisters of both the Dark and the Light, Zedd
assumed, wore outfits that ran from neck to wrist to ankle, but were so
transparent that the women might as well have been naked. This, too, was
meant to show that Emperor Jagang thought little of these women's talents,
and valued them only for his pleasure. The older, less attractive women
standing off to the sides wore drab clothes. These were probably Sisters who
served the emperor in other menial ways.
Jagang delighted in having under his control, as slaves, some of the
most gifted people in the world. It suited the nature of the Order to demean
those with ability, rather than to celebrate them.
Jagang watched Zedd taking in the house slaves, but showed no emotion.
The dream walker's bull neck made him look almost other than human. The
muscles of his chest, as well as his massive shoulders, were displayed by an
open, sleeveless lamb's-wool vest. He was as powerful and brawny a man as
Zedd had seen, an intimidating presence even at rest.
As Zedd and Adie stood mute, Jagang's teeth tore off another chunk of
meat from the goose leg. In the tense silence, he watched them as he chewed,
as if deciding what he might do with his newest plunder.
More than anything, it was his inky black eyes, devoid of any pupils,
irises, or whites, that threatened to halt the blood in Zedd's veins. The
last time he had seen those eyes, Zedd had not been shackled, but that
ungifted girl had prevented Zedd from finishing the man. That was going to
turn out to be the missed opportunity that Zedd would most regret. His
chance to kill Jagang had slipped through his ringers that day, not because
of the vast power of all the skilled Sisters and troops arrayed against him,
but all because of a single ungifted girl.
Those black eyes, the eyes of a mature dream walker, glistened in the
candlelight. Across their dark voids, dim shapes shifted, like clouds on a
moonless night.
The directness of the dream walker's gaze was as obvious as was Adie's
when she looked at Zedd with her pure white eyes. Under Ja-gang's direct
glare, Zedd had to remind himself to relax his muscles, and remember to
breathe.
The thing about those eyes that most terrified him, though, was what he
saw in them: a keen, calculating mind. Zedd had fought against Jagang long
enough to have come to understand that one underestimated this man at great
peril.
"Jagang the Just," the Sister said, holding an introductory hand out to
the nightmare before them. "Excellency, this is Zeddicus Zu'l Zo-rander,
First Wizard, and a sorceress by the name of Adie."
"I know who they are," Jagang said in a deep voice as heavy with threat
as with distaste.
He leaned back, hanging one arm over the back of the chair and one leg
over a carved arm. He gestured with the goose leg.
"Richard Rani's grandfather, as I hear told."
Zedd said nothing.
Jagang tossed the partially eaten leg on a platter and picked up a
knife. With one hand he sawed a chunk of red meat off a roast and stabbed
it. Elbow on the table, he waved the knife as he spoke. Red juice ran down
the blade.
"Probably not the way you had hoped to meet me."
He laughed at his own joke, a deep, resonating sound alive with menace.
With his teeth, Jagang drew the chunk of meat off the knife and chewed
as he watched them, as if unable to decide on a wealth of delightfully
terrible options parading through his thoughts.
He washed the meat down with a gulp from a jeweled silver goblet, his
gaze never leaving them. "I can't tell you how pleased I am that you have
come to visit me."
His grin was like death itself. "Alive."
He rolled his wrist, circling the knife. "We have a lot to talk about."
His laugh died out, but the grin remained. "Well, you do, anyway. I'll be a
good host and listen."
Zedd and Adie remained silent as Jagang's black-eyed gaze went from one
to the other.
"Not so talkative, just yet? Well, no matter. You will be babbling soon
enough."
Zedd didn't waste the effort telling Jagang that torture would gain him
nothing. Jagang would not believe any such boast, and even if he did, it
would hardly stay his wish to see it done.
Jagang fingered a few grapes from a bowl. "You are a resourceful man,
Wizard Zorander." He popped several grapes in his mouth and chewed as he
spoke. "All alone there in Aydindril, with an army surrounding you, you
managed to gull me into thinking I had trapped Richard Rahl and the Mother
Confessor. Quite a trick. I must give you credit where credit is due.
"And the light spell you ignited among my men, that was remarkable." He
put another grape in his mouth. "Do you have any idea how many hundreds of
thousands of them were caught up in your wizardry?"
Zedd could see the corded muscles in the man's hairy arm draped over
the back of the chair stand out as he flexed the fist. He relaxed the hand
then and leaned forward, using his thumb to gouge out a long chunk of ham.
He waved the meat as he went on. "It's that kind of magic I need you to
do for me, good wizard. I understand, from the stupid bitches I have who
call themselves the Sisters of the Light, or the Sisters of the Dark,
depending on who they've decided can offer better favors in the afterlife,
that you probably didn't conjure that little bit of magic on your own, but,
rather, you used a constructed spell from the Wizard's Keep and simply
ignited it among my men with some kind of trick, or trigger--probably some
small curiosity that one of them picked up and in the act of having a look,
they set it off."
Zedd was somewhat alarmed that Jagang had been able to learn so much.
The emperor took a big bite off the end of the piece of ham as he watched
them. His indulgent look was beginning to wear thin.
"So, since you can't do such marvelous magic yourself, I've had a few
items brought from the Keep so you can tell me how they work, what they do.
I'm sure there must be a great number of intriguing items among the
inventory. I'd like to have some of those conjured spells so they can blow
open a few of the passes into D'Hara for us. It would save me some time and
trouble. I'm sure you can understand my eagerness to be into D'Hara and have
this petty resistance finally over with."
Zedd heaved a deep breath and finally spoke. "For most of those items,
you could torture me to the end of time and I still wouldn't be able to tell
you anything because I don't have any knowledge of them. Unlike you, I know
my own limits. I simply don't know what such a spell might look like. Even
if I did, that doesn't mean I would know how to work it. I was simply lucky
with that one I used."
"Maybe, maybe, but you do know about some of the items. You are, after
all, as I hear told, First Wizard; it is your Keep. To claim ignorance of
the things in it is hardly credible. Despite your claim of luck, you managed
to know enough about that constructed light web to ignite it among my men,
so you obviously have knowledge about the most powerful of the items."
"You don't know the first thing about magic," Zedd snapped. "You have a
head full of grand ideas and you think all you have to do is command they be
done. Well, they can't. You're a fool who doesn't know the first thing about
real magic or its limits."
An eyebrow lifted over one of Jagang's inky eyes. "Oh, I think I know
more than you might think, wizard. You see, I love to read, and I, well, I
have the advantage of perusing some of the most remarkably gifted minds you
can imagine. I probably know a great deal more about magic than you give me
credit for."
"I give you credit for bold self-delusion."
"Self-delusion?" He spread his arms. "Can you create a Slide, Wizard
Zorander?"
Zedd froze. Jagang had heard the name; that was all. The man liked to
read. He'd read that name somewhere.
"Of course not, and neither can anyone else alive today."
"You can't create such a being, Wizard Zorander. But you have no idea
how much I know about magic. You see, I've learned to bring lost talents
back to life--arts that have long been believed to be dead and vanished."
"I give you the grandiosity of your dreaming, Jagang, but dreaming is
easy. Your dreams can't be made real just because you dream them and decide
that you wish them to come alive."
"Sister Tahirah, here, knows the truth of it." Jagang gestured with his
knife. "Tell him, darlin. Tell him what I can dream and what I can bring to
life."
The woman hesitantly stepped forward several paces. "It is as His
Excellency says." She looked away from Zedd's frown to fuss with her wiry
gray hair. "With His Excellency's brilliant direction, we were able to bring
back some of the old knowledge. With the expert guidance of our emperor, we
were able to invest in a wizard named Nicholas an ability not seen in the
world for three thousand years. It is one of His Excellency's greatest
achievements. I can personally assure you that it is as His Excellency says;
a Slide again walks the world. It is no fancy, Wizard Zorander, but the
truth.
"The spirits help me," she added under her breath, "I was there to see
the Slide born into the world."
"You created a Slide?" Fists still bound behind his back, Zedd took an
angry stride toward the Sister. "Are you out of your mind, woman!" She
retreated to the back wall. Zedd turned his fury on Jagang. "Slides were a
catastrophe! They can't be controlled! You would have to be crazy to create
one!"
Jagang smiled. "Jealous, wizard? Jealous that you are unable to
accomplish such a thing, can't create such a weapon against me, while I can
create one to take Richard Rahl and his wife from you?"
"A Slide has powers you couldn't possibly control."
"A Slide is no danger to a dream walker. My ability is quicker than
his. I am his better."
"It doesn't matter how quick you are--it isn't about being quick! A
Slide can't be controlled and he isn't going to do what you want!"
"I seem to be controlling him just fine." Jagang leaned in on an elbow.
"You think magic is necessary to control those you would master, but I don't
need magic. Not with Nicholas nor with mankind.
"You seem to be obsessed with control, I am not. I managed to find a
people those like you didn't want to walk freely among their fellow man, a
people cast out by the gifted, a people reviled for not having any spark of
your precious gift of magic--a people hated and banished because your kind
wasn't able to control them. That was their crime: being outside the control
of your magic."
Jagang's fist slammed the table. The slaves all jumped with the
platters.
"This is how your kind wants mankind's future to be; your kind wants
only those with a spark of the gift to be allowed to walk free. This, so you
can use your gift to control them! Like that collar around your neck, your
lust is to collar all of mankind with magic.
"I found those outcast ungifted people and have brought them back into
the fold of their fellow man. Much to your disapproval and the loathing of
your kind, they can't be touched by your vile magic."
Zedd couldn't imagine where Jagang had found such people. "And so now
you have a Slide to control them for you."
"Your kind condemned and banished them; we have welcomed them among us.
In fact, we wish to model man himself after them. Our cause is theirs by
their very nature--purity of mankind without any taint of magic. In this way
the world will be one and at last at peace.
"I have the advantage over you, wizard; I have right on my side. I
don't need magic to win; you do. I have mankind's best future in mind and
have set our irreversible course.
"With the help of these people, I took your Keep. With their help, I
have recovered invaluable treasures from within. You couldn't do a thing to
stop them, now could you? Man will now set his own course, without the curse
of magic darkening his struggle.
"I now have a Slide to help us to that noble end. He is working with
those people for the benefit of our cause. In doing so, Nicholas has already
proved invaluable.
"What's more, that Slide, which your kind could never control, has
vowed to deliver to me the two I want most: your grandson and his wife. I
have great things planned for them--well, for her, anyway." His red-faced
rage melted into a grin. "For him, not so great things."
Zedd could hardly contain his own rage. Were it not for the collar
stifling his gift, he would have reduced the entire place to ash by now.
"Once this Nicholas becomes adept at what he can do, you will find that
he will want revenge of his own, and a price you may find far too high."
Jagang spread his arms. "There, you are wrong, wizard. I can afford
whatever Nicholas wants for Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor. There is no
such thing as a price too high.
"You may think me greedy and selfish, but you would be wrong. While I
enjoy the spoils, I most relish the role I play in bringing heathens to
heel. It is the end that truly concerns me, and in the end I will have
mankind bow as they should to our just cause and the Creator's ways."
Jagang seemed to have spent his flash of intensity. He leaned back and
scooped walnuts from a silver bowl.
"Zedd be wrong," Adie finally spoke up. "You have shown us that you
know what you be doing. You will be able to control your Slide just fine.
May I suggest you keep him close, to aid you in your efforts."
Jagang smiled at her. "You, too, my dried-up old sorceress, will be
telling me all you know about what is in those crates."
"Bah," Adie scoffed. "You be a fool with worthless treasures. I hope
you pull a muscle carrying them with you everywhere."
"Adie's right," Zedd put in. "You are an incompetent oaf who is only
going to--"
"Oh, come, come, you two. Do you think you will throw me into a fit of
rage and I'll slaughter the both of you on the spot?" His wicked grin
returned. "Spare you the proper justice of what is to come?"
Zedd and Adie fell silent.
"When I was a boy," Jagang said in a quieter tone as he stared off into
the distance, "I was nothing. A street tough in Altur'Rang. A bully. A
thief. My life was empty. My future was the next meal.
"One day, I saw a man coming down the street. He looked like he might
have some money and I wanted it. It was getting dark. I came up silently
behind him, intending to bash in his head, but just then he turned and
looked me in the eye.
"His smile stopped me in my tracks. It wasn't a kindly smile, or a weak
smile, but the kind of smile a man gives you when he knows he can kill you
where you stand if it pleases him.
"He pulled a coin from his pocket and flipped it to me, and then,
without a word, turned and went on his way.
"A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, I woke up in an alley,
where I slept under old blankets and crates, and I saw a shadowy form out by
the street. I knew it was him before he flipped me the coin and moved off
into the darkness.
"The next time I saw him, he was sitting on a stone bench at the edge
of an old square that some of the less fortunate men of Altur'Rang
frequented. Like me, no one would give these men a chance in life. People's
greed had sucked the life out of these men. I used to go there to look at
them, to tell myself I didn't want to grow up to be like them, but I knew I
would, a nobody, human refuse waiting to pass into the shadow of oblivion in
the afterlife. A soul without worth.
"I sat down on the bench beside the man and asked him why he'd given me
money. Instead of giving me some answer that most people would give a boy,
he told me about mankind's grand purpose, the meaning of life, and how we
are here only as a brief stop on the way to what the Creator has in store
for us--if we are strong enough to rise to the challenge.
"I'd never heard such a thing. I told him that I didn't think that such
things mattered in my life because I was only a thief. He said that I was
only striking back from the injustice of my lot in life. He said that
mankind was evil for making me the way I was and only through sacrifice and
helping those like me could man hope to be redeemed in the afterlife. He
opened my mind to man's sinful ways.
"Before he left, he turned back and asked me if I knew how long
eternity was. I said no. He said that our miserable time in this world was
but a blink before we entered the next world. That really made me think, for
the first time, about our greater purpose.
"Over the next months, Brother Narev took the time to talk to me, to
tell me about Creation and eternity. He gave me a vision of a possible
better future where before I had none. He taught me about sacrifice and
redemption. I thought I was doomed to an eternity of darkness until he
showed me the light.
"He took me in, in return for helping him with life's chores.
"For me, Brother Narev was a teacher, a priest, an advisor, a means to
salvation"--Jagang's gaze rose to Zedd--"and a grandfather, all rolled into
one.
"He gave me the fire of what mankind can and should be. He showed me
the true sin of selfish greed and the dark void of where it would lead
mankind. Over time, he made me the fist of his vision. He was the soul; I
was the bone and muscle.
"Brother Narev allowed me the honor of igniting the revolution. He
placed me at the fore of the rise of mankind over the oppression of
sinfulness. We are the new hope for the future of man, and Brother Narev
himself allowed me to be the one to carry his vision in the cleansing flames
of mankind's redemption."
Jagang leaned back in his chair, fixing Zedd with as grim a look as
Zedd had ever seen.
"And then this spring, while carrying Brother Narev's noble challenge
to mankind, to those who had never had a chance to see the vision of what
man can be, of the future without the blight of magic and oppression and
greed and groveling to be better than others, I came to Aydindril... and
what do I find?
"Brother Narev's head on a pike, with a note, 'Compliments of Richard
Rahl.'
"The man I admired most in the world, the man who brought to us all the
hallowed dream of mankind's true purpose in this life as charged by the
Creator himself, was dead, his head stuck on a pike by your grandson.
"If ever there was a greater blasphemy, a greater crime against the
whole of mankind, I don't know of it."
Sullen shapes shifted across Jagang's black eyes. "Richard Rahl will be
dealt justice. He will suffer such a blow, before I send him to the Keeper.
I just wanted you to know your fate, old man. Your grandson will know
something of that kind of pain, and the additional torment of knowing that I
have his bride and will make her pay dearly for her own crimes." A ghost of
the grin returned. "After he has paid this price, then I will kill him."
Zedd yawned. "Nice story. You left out all the parts where you
slaughter innocent people by the tens of thousands because they don't want
to live under your vile rule or Narev's sick, twisted vision.
"On second thought, don't bother with the sorry excuses. Just cut off
my head, put it on a pike, and be done with it."
Jagang's smile returned in its full glory. "Not as easily as that, old
man. First you have some talking to do."
Ah, yes," Zedd said. "The torture. I almost forgot."
"Torture?"
With two fingers Jagang signaled a woman to the side. The older Sister
standing wringing her hands flinched at seeing his gaze on her and
immediately rushed off behind a curtain of wall hangings. Zedd could hear
her whispering urgent instructions to people beyond, and then the thump of
feet rushing across the carpets and out of the tent.
Jagang went back to his leisurely meal while Zedd and Adie stood before
him, starving, dying of thirst. The dream walker finally set his knife
across a plate. Seeing this, the slaves sprang into action, clearing away
the variety of dishes, most having been tasted, but that hardly made a dent
in them. In a matter of moments the entire table was emptied of the food and
drink, leaving only the books, the scrolls, the candles, and the silver bowl
of walnuts.
Sister Tahirah, the Sister who had captured Zedd and Adie at the Keep,
stood to the side, her hands clasped before her as she watched them. Despite
her obvious fear of Jagang, and her servile fawning over the man, the
knowing smirk at Zedd and Adie betrayed the pleasure she was deriving from
what was to come.
When half a dozen grisly men entered the room and stood off to the
side, Zedd began to understand what it was that pleased Sister Tahirah.
They were unkempt, brawny, and as merciless-looking as any men Zedd had
ever seen. Their hair was wildly tangled and greasy. Their hands and
forearms were spattered with sooty smears, their fingernails ragged and
foul. Their filthy clothes were stained dark with dried blood from the labor
of their profession.
These men worked at torture.
Zedd looked away from the Sister's steady gaze. She hoped to see fear,
panic, or perhaps sobbing.
Then a group of men and women were ushered into the dim room in the
emperor's tent. They looked to be farmers or humble working folk, probably
picked up by patrols. The men embraced their wives as children huddled
around the women's skirts like chicks around hens. The people were herded
over to the side of the room, opposite the line of torturers.
Zedd's eyes suddenly turned to Jagang. The dream walker's black eyes
were watching him as he chewed a walnut.
"Emperor," said the Sister who had brought the families in, "these are
some of the local people, people from the countryside, as you requested."
She held an introductory hand out. "Good people, this is our revered
emperor, Jagang the Just. He brings the light of the Imperial Order to the
world, guided by the Creator's wisdom, that we might all lead better lives
and find salvation with the Creator in the afterlife."
Jagang surveyed the cluster of Midlanders as they awkwardly bowed and
curtsied.
Zedd felt sick at seeing the timid terror on their faces. They would
have had to walk through the encampment of Order soldiers. They would have
seen the size of the force that had overrun their homeland.
Jagang lifted his arm toward Zedd. "Perhaps you know this man? This is
First Wizard Zorander. He is one who has ruled you with his command of
magic. As you can see, he is now shackled before us. We have freed you from
the wicked rule of this man and those like him."
The people's eyes darted between Zedd and Jagang, unsure of their role
in the emperor's tent, or what they were supposed to do. They finally bobbed
their heads, mumbling their thanks for their liberation.
"The gifted, like these two, could have used their ability to help
mankind. Instead, they used it for themselves. Where they should have
sacrificed for those in need, they were selfish. It is criminal to behave as
they have, live as they have, with all they have. It makes me angry to think
of all they could do for those in need, those like you poor people, were it
not for their selfish ways. People suffer and die without the help they
could have had, without the help these people could have given, were they
not so self-centered.
"This wizard and his sorceress are here because they have refused to
help us free the rest of the people of the New World by telling us the
function of the vile things of magic we have captured along with
them--things of magic they scheme to use to slaughter untold numbers of
people. This selfish wizard and sorceress do this out of spite that they
could not have their way."
All the wide eyes turned to Zedd and Adie.
"I could tell you people of the vast numbers of deaths this man is
responsible for, but I fear you would be unable to fathom it. I can tell you
that I simply cannot allow this man to be responsible for tens of thousands
more deaths."
Jagang smiled at the children then and gestured with both hands, urging
them to come to him. The children, a dozen or so, from six or seven to maybe
twelve, clung to their parents. Jagang's gaze rose to those parents as he
again motioned the children to come to him. The parents understood and
reluctantly urged their children to do as the emperor bid of them.
The clump of innocence haltingly approached Jagang's outstretched arms
and wide grin. He embraced them woodenly as they shuffled in close around
him. He tousled the blond hair of a boy, and then the straight sandy hair of
a girl. Several of the younger ones peered pleadingly back at parents before
cringing at Jagang's meaty hand on their backs, his jovial pat on their
cheek.
Silent terror hung thick in the air.
It was as frightening a sight as Zedd had ever witnessed.
"Well, now," the smiling emperor said, "let me get to the reason I have
called upon you people."
His powerful arms gathered the children before him. As a Sister blocked
a boy wanting to return to his parents, Jagang put his huge hands on a young
girl's waist and set her upon his knee. The girl's wide eyes stared up at
the smiling face, the bald head, but mostly at the nightmare void of the
dream walker's inky eyes.
Jagang looked from the girl back to the parents. "You see, the wizard
and sorceress have refused to offer their help. In order to save a great
many lives, I must have their cooperation. They must answer honestly all my
questions. They refuse. I'm hoping you good people can convince them to tell
us what we need to know in order to save the lives of a great many people,
and free a great many more from the oppression of their magic."
Jagang looked toward the row of men standing silently against the
opposite wall. With a single tilt of his head, he commanded them forward.
"What are you doing?" a woman asked, even as her husband tried to
restrain her. "What do you intend?"
"What I intend," Jagang told the crowd of parents, "is for you good
people to convince the wizard and the sorceress to talk. I'm going to put
you in a tent alone with them so that you can persuade them to do their duty
to mankind--persuade them to cooperate with us."
As the men began seizing the children, they finally burst out in
frightened crying. The parents, seeing their red-faced children bawling in
terror, cried out themselves and rushed forward to retrieve them. The big
men, each holding one or two little arms in a fist, shoved the parents back.
The parents fell to hysterical screaming for the children to be freed.
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that," Jagang said over the wails of the
children. He tilted his head again and the men started carting the twisting,
screaming children out of the tent. The parents were wailing as well, trying
to reach in past big filthy arms to touch what was to them most precious in
the world.
The parents were bewildered and horrified, fearing to cross a line that
would bring wrath down on their children, yet not wanting them to be carted
away. Against their urgent pleading, the children were swiftly whisked away.
As the children were taken out, the Sisters immediately blocked the
doorway behind them, keeping the parents from following. The tent fell to
pandemonium.
With the single word "silence" from Jagang, and his fist on the table,
everyone fell silent.
"Now," Jagang said, "these two prisoners are going to be confined to a
tent. All of you are going to be in there, alone, with them. There will be
no guards, no watchers."
"But what about our children?" a woman in tears begged, caring nothing
about Zedd and Adie.
Jagang pulled a squat candle toward him on the table. "This will be the
tent with these two, and you good people." He circled a finger around the
candle. "All around this tent with you and the criminals, there will be
other tents close."
Everyone stared at his ringed finger going round and round the candle.
"Your children will be close by, in these tents." Jagang scooped up a
handful of walnuts from the silver bowl. He dribbled some onto the table
around the candle and put the rest into his mouth.
The room was silent as they all stared at him, watching him chew the
walnuts, afraid to ask a question, afraid to hear what he might say next.
Finally a woman could no longer hold her tongue. "Why will they be
there, in those tents?"
Jagang's black eyes took them all in before he spoke, making sure none
would miss what he had to tell them.
"Those men who took your children to those tents will be torturing
them."
The parents' eyes widened. Blood drained from their faces. One woman
fainted. Several others bent to her. Sister Tahirah squatted beside the
woman and touched a hand to the woman's forehead. The woman's eyes popped
open. The Sister told the women to get her to her feet.
When Jagang was satisfied that he had everyone's attention, he circled
a finger around the candle again, over the walnuts around it. "The tents
will be close around so you can all clearly hear your children being
tortured, to be sure that you understand that they will not be spared the
worst those men can do."
The parents stood frozen, staring, seemingly unable to believe the
reality of what they were hearing.
"Every few hours, I will come to see if you good people have convinced
the wizard and the sorceress to tell us what we need to know. If you have
not succeeded, then I will go off to other business and when I have the time
I will return again to check if these two have decided to talk.
"Just be sure that this wizard and sorceress do not die while you
convince them to be reasonable. If they die, then they can't answer our
questions. Only when and if they answer questions will the children be
released."
Jagang turned his nightmare eyes on Zedd. "My men have a great deal of
experience at torturing people. When you hear the screams coming from the
tents all around, you will have no doubt as to their skill, or their
determination. I think you should know that they can keep their guests alive
under torture for days, but they cannot work miracles. People, especially
such young, tender souls, cannot survive indefinitely. But, should these
children die before you agree to cooperate, there are plenty more families
with children who can take their place."
Zedd could not halt the tears that ran down his face to drip off his
chin as Sister Tahirah took his arm and pulled him toward the doorway. The
crowd of parents fell on him, clawing at his clothes, screaming and crying
for him to do as the emperor asked.
Zedd dug in his heels and struggled to a stop before the table.
Desperate hands clutched at his robes. As he looked around at their
tear-stained faces, meeting the eyes of each, they fell silent.
"I hope you people can now understand the nature of what it is we are
fighting. I am so sorry, but I cannot dull the pain of this darkest hour of
your lives. If I were to do as this man wants, countless more children would
be subjected to this tyrant's brutality. I know that you will not be able to
weigh this against the precious lives of your children, but I must. Pray the
good spirits take them quickly, and take them to a place of eternal peace."
Zedd could not say more to them, to their desperate gazes. He turned
his watery eyes to Jagang. "This will not work, Jagang. I know you will do
it anyway, but it will not work."
Behind the heavy table, Jagang slowly rose. "Children in this land of
yours are plentiful. How many are you prepared to sacrifice before you allow
mankind to be free? How long are you willing to persist in your stubborn
refusal to allow them to have a future free from suffering, want, and your
uninspired morals?"
The heavy gold and silver chains around his neck, the looted medallions
and ornaments resting against his muscled chest, and the rings of kings on
his fingers all sparkled in the candlelight.
Zedd felt the numb weight of a hopeless future under the yoke of the
monstrous ideals of this man and his ilk.
"You cannot win in this, wizard. Like all those who fight on your side
to oppress mankind, to allow the common people to be left to cruel fate, you
are not even willing to sacrifice for the sake of the lives of children. You
are brave with words, but you have a cold soul and a weak heart. You don't
have the will to do what must be done to prevail. I do."
Jagang tilted his head and the Sister shoved Zedd toward the door. The
screaming, crying, begging crowd of people closed in around Zedd and Adie,
clawing and pawing at them in wild desperation.
In the distance, Zedd could hear the horrifying screams of their
terrified children
They aren't far," Richard said as he stepped back in among the trees.
He stood silently watching as Kahlan straightened the shoulders of her
dress.
The dress showed no ill effects from its long confinement in their
packs. The almost white, satiny smooth fabric glistened in the eerie light
of the churning overcast. The flowing lines of the dress, cut square at the
neck, bore no lace or frills, nothing to distract from its simple elegance.
The sight of Kahlan in that dress still took his breath away.
She looked out through the trees when they heard Cara's whistle. The
warning signal Richard had taught Cara was the plaintive, high, clear
whistle of a common wood pewee, although Cara didn't know that's what it
was. When he'd first told Cara that he wanted to teach her a pewee birdcall
as a warning signal, she said she wasn't going to learn the call of any bird
named a pewee. Richard gave in and told her that he would instead teach her
the call of the small, fierce, short-tailed pine hawk, but only if she would
be willing to work hard at getting it right, since it was more difficult.
Satisfied to have her way, Cara had agreed and readily learned the simple
whistle. She was good at it and used it often as a signal. Richard never
told her that there was no such thing as a short-tailed pine hawk, or that
hawks didn't make whistles like that.
Out through the screen of branches, the dark form of the statue stood
guard over an area of the pass that for thousands of years had been
deserted. Richard wondered again why the people back then would have put
such a statue in a pass no one was likely to ever again visit. He thought
about the ancient society that had placed it, and at what they must have
thought, sealing people away for the crime of not having a spark of the
gift.
Richard brushed pine needles off the back of the sleeve of Kahlan's
dress. "Here, hold still; let me look at you."
Kahlan turned back, arms at her sides, as he smoothed the fabric at her
upper arms. Her unafraid green eyes, beneath eyebrows that had the graceful
arch of a raptor's wings in flight, met his gaze. Her features seemed to
have only grown more exquisite since he had first met her. Her look, her
pose, the way she gazed at him as if she could see into his soul, struck a
chord in him. Clearly evident in her eyes was the intelligence that had from
the first so captivated him.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
Despite everything, he couldn't hold back his smile. "Standing there
like that, in that dress, your long hair so beautiful, the green of the
trees behind you... it just suddenly reminded me of the first time I saw
you."
Her special smile, the smile she gave no one but him, spread radiantly
through her bewitching eyes. She put her wrists on his shoulders and locked
her fingers behind his neck, pulling him into a kiss.
As it always did, her kiss so completely consumed him with his need of
her that he momentarily lost track of the world. She melted into his
embrace. For that moment there was no Imperial Order, no Bandakar, no
D'Haran Empire, no Sword of Truth, no chimes, no gift turning its power
against him, no poison, no warning beacons, no black-tipped races, no
Jagang, no Nicholas, no Sisters of the Dark. Her kiss made him forget
everything but her. In that moment there was nothing but the two of them.
Kahlan made his life complete; her kiss reaffirmed that bond.
She pulled back, gazing up into his eyes again. "Seems like you've had
nothing but trouble ever since that day you found me."
Richard smiled. "My life is what I've had since that day I found you.
When I found you, I found my life."
Holding her face in both hands, he kissed her again.
Betty nudged his leg and bleated.
"You two about ready?" Jennsen called down the hill. "They'll be here,
soon. Didn't you hear Cara's whistle?"
"We heard," Kahlan called up to Jennsen. "We'll be right there."
Turning back, she smiled as she looked him up and down. "Well, Lord
Rahl, you certainly don't look the way you did the first time I saw you."
She straightened the tooled leather baldric lying over the black tunic
banded in gold. "But you look exactly the same, too. Your eyes are the same
as I saw that day." She cocked her head as she smiled up at him. "I don't
see the headache of the gift in your eyes."
"It's been gone for a while, but after that kiss, it would be
impossible to have a headache."
"Well, if it comes back," she said with intimate promise, "just tell me
and I'll see what I can do to make it go away."
Richard ran his fingers through her hair and gazed one last time into
her eyes before slipping his arm around her waist. Together they walked
through the cathedral of trees that was their cover off to the side near the
crown of the ridge, and out toward the open slope. Between the trunks of the
pines, he could see Jennsen running down the hill, leaping from rock to
rock, avoiding the patches of snow. She rushed in to meet them just within
the small cluster of trees.
"I spotted them," she said, breathlessly. "I could see them down in the
gorge on the far side. They'll be up here soon." A grin brightened her face.
"I saw Tom leading them."
Jennsen took in the sight of both of them, then--Kahlan in the white
dress of the Mother Confessor and Richard in the outfit he had in part found
in the Keep that had once been worn by war wizards. By the surprise on
Jennsen's face, he thought she might curtsy.
"Wow," she said. "That sure is some dress." She looked Richard up and
down again. "You two look like you should rule the world."
"Well," Richard said, "let's hope Owen's people think so."
Cara pushed a spruce bough aside as she ducked in under the limbs of
trees. Dressed again in her skintight red leather outfit, she looked as
intimidating as she had the first time Richard had seen her in the grand
halls of the People's Palace in D'Hara.
"Lord Rahl once confided in me that he intended to rule the world,"
Cara said, having heard Jennsen's pronouncement.
"Really?" Jennsen asked.
Richard sighed at her awe. "Ruling the world has proven more difficult
than I thought it would be."
"If you would listen more to the Mother Confessor and to me," Cara
advised, "you would have an easier time of it."
Richard ignored Cara's cockiness. "Would you get everything together? I
want to be up there with Kahlan before Tom arrives with Owen and his men."
Cara nodded and started collecting the things they'd been working so
hard to make, stacking some and taking a count of others. Richard laid a
hand on Jennsen's shoulder.
"Tie Betty up so that she'll stay here for now. All right? We don't
need her in the way."
"I'll see to it," Jennsen said as she fussed with ringlets of her red
hair. "I'll make sure she won't be able to bother us or wander off."
It was plainly evident how eager she was to see Tom again. "You look
beautiful," Richard assured her. Her grin returned to overpower the anxious
expression.
Betty's tail was a blur as she peered up at them, eager to go wherever
the rest of them were going. "Come on," Jennsen said to her friend, "you're
staying here for a while."
Jennsen snatched Betty's rope, holding her back, as Richard, with
Kahlan close at his side, made his way out past the last of the trees and
onto the open ledge. Somber clouds hung low against the face of surrounding
mountains. With the towering snowcapped peaks hidden by the low, ominous
clouds, Richard thought it felt like they were near the roof of the world.
The wind down at the ground had died, leaving the trees motionless and,
by contrast, making the boiling movement of the cloud masses seem almost
alive. The flurries of the day before had ended and then the sun had made a
brief appearance to shrink the patches of snow on the pass. He didn't think
there was much chance of seeing the sun this day.
The towering stone sentinel waited at the top of the trail, watching
forever over the pass and out toward the Pillars of Creation. As they
approached it, Richard scanned the surrounding sky but saw only some small
birds--flycatchers and white-breasted nuthatches--flitting among the nearby
stand of spruce trees. He was relieved that the races had remained absent
ever since they had taken this ancient trail up through the pass.
The first night up in the pass, farther back down the slope in the
heavier forests, they had worked hard to build a snug shelter, just managing
to get it done as darkness had settled into the vast woods. Early the next
day, Richard had cleared snow off the statue and all around the ledges of
the base.
He had discovered more writing.
He now knew more about this man whose statue had been placed there in
the pass. Another small flurry had since dusted snow over the writing,
burying again the long-dead words.
Kahlan placed a comforting hand on his back. "They will listen,
Richard. They will listen to you."
With every breath, pain pulled at him from deep inside. It was getting
worse. "They'd better, or I'll have no chance to get the antidote to this
poison."
He knew he couldn't do it alone. Even if he knew how to call upon his
gift and command its magic, he still would not be able to wave a hand or
perform some grand feat of conjuring that would cast the Imperial Order out
of the Bandakaran Empire. He knew that such things were beyond the scope of
even the most powerful magic. Magic, properly used, properly conceived, was
a tool, much like his sword, employed to accomplish a goal.
Magic was not what would save him. Magic was not a panacea. If he was
to succeed, he had to use his head to come up with a way to prevail.
He no longer knew if he could even depend on the magic of the Sword of
Truth. Nor did he know how long he had before his own gift might kill him.
At times, it felt as if his gift and the poison were in a race to see which
could do him in first.
Richard led Kahlan the rest of the way up and around to the back of the
statue, to a small prominence of rock at the very top of the pass where he
wanted to wait for the men. From that spot they could see through the gaps
in the mountains and back into Bandakar. Out at the edge of the level area,
Richard spotted Tom down below leading the men through the trees and up the
switchback trail.
Tom peered up as he ascended the trail and spotted Richard and Kahlan.
He saw how they were dressed, where they stood, and gave no familiar wave,
realizing that doing so would be inappropriate. Through breaks in the trees,
Richard could see men following Tom's gaze up above them.
Richard lifted his sword a few inches, checking that it was clear in
its scabbard. Overhead, the dark, towering clouds all around seemed to have
gathered, as if they were all crowding into the confines of the pass to
watch.
Standing tall as he gazed off to the unknown land beyond, to an unknown
empire, Richard took Kahlan's hand.
Hand in hand, they silently awaited what would be the beginning of a
challenge that would change forever the nature of the world, or would be the
end of his chance at life.
As the men following Tom emerged from the trees below and into the
open, Richard was dismayed to see that their numbers were far less than Owen
said had been hiding with him in the hills. Rubbing the furrows on his brow
with his fingertips, Richard stepped back up to the short plateau where
Kahlan waited.
Her own brow drew down with concern. "What's wrong?"
"I doubt they brought fifty men."
Kahlan took up his hand again, her voice coming in gentle assurance.
"That's fifty more than we had."
Cara came up behind them, dropping her load off to the side. She took
up station behind Richard to his left, on the opposite side from Kahlan.
Richard met her grim gaze. He wondered how the woman always managed to look
as if she fully expected everything to happen just as she wished it to
happen, and that was the end of it.
Tom stepped up over the edge of the rock, the men following. He was
sweating from the exertion of the climb, but a tight smile warmed his face
when he saw Jennsen just coming up the other side of the rise. She returned
the brief smile and then stood in the shadows beside the base of the statue,
back out of the way.
When the unkempt band of men caught sight of Richard in his black pants
and boots, black tunic trimmed in a band of gold around the edge, the broad
leather belt, the leather-padded silver wristbands with ancient symbols
circling them, and the gleaming silver-and-gold-wrought scabbard, they
seemed to lose their courage. When they saw Kahlan standing beside him, they
cowered back toward the edge, bowing hesitantly, not knowing what they were
supposed to do.
"Come on, then," Tom told them, prompting them all to come up onto the
expanse of flat rock in front of Richard and Kahlan.
Owen whispered to the men as he moved among them, urging them to come
forward as Tom was gesturing. They complied timidly, shuffling in a little
closer, but still leaving a wide safety margin between themselves and
Richard.
As the men all gazed about, unsure as to what they were supposed to do
next, Cara stepped forward and held an arm out toward Richard.
"I present Lord Rahl," she said in a clear tone that rang out over the
men gathered at the top of the pass, "the Seeker of Truth and wielder of the
Sword of Truth, the bringer of death, the Master of the D'Haran Empire, and
husband to the Mother Confessor herself."
If the men had looked timid and unsure before, Cara's introduction made
them all the more so. When they looked from Richard and Kahlan back to
Cara's penetrating blue eyes, seeing her waiting, they all went to a knee in
a bow before Richard.
When Cara stepped deliberately to the fore, in front of the men,
turned, and went to her knees, Tom got the message and did the same. Both
bent forward and touched their foreheads to the ground.
In the silent, late-morning air, the men waited, still unsure what it
was they were to do.
"Master Rahl, guide us," Cara said in a clear voice so the men could
all hear her. She waited.
Tom looked back over his shoulder at all the blond-headed men watching.
When Tom frowned with displeasure, the men understood that they were
expected to follow the lead. They all finally went to both knees and bowed
forward, imitating Tom and Cara, until their foreheads touched the cold
granite.
"Master Rahl, guide us," Cara began again, never lifting her forehead
from the ground.
This time, led by Tom, the men all repeated the words after her.
"Master Rahl, guide us," they said with a decided lack of unity.
"Master Rahl, teach us," Cara said when they all had finished the
beginning of the oath. They followed her lead again, but still hesitantly
and without much coordination.
"Master Rahl, protect us," Cara said.
The men repeated the words, their voices coming a little more in union.
"In your light we thrive."
The men mumbled the words after her.
"In your mercy we are sheltered."
They repeated the line.
"In your wisdom we are humbled."
Again they spoke the words after her.
"We live only to serve."
When they finished repeating the words, she spoke the last line in a
clear voice: "Our lives are yours."
Cara rose up on her knees when they finished and glared back at the men
all still bowed forward but peeking up at her. "Those are the words of the
devotion to the Lord Rahl. You will now speak it together with me three
times, as is proper in the field."
Cara again put her forehead to the ground at Richard's feet.
"Master Rahl, guide us. Master Rahl, teach us. Master Rahl, protect us.
In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we
are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours."
Richard and Kahlan stood above the people as they spoke the second and
third devotion. This was no empty show put on by Cara for the benefit of the
men; this was the devotion as it had been spoken for thousands of years and
Cara meant every word of it.
"You may rise now," she told the men.
The men cautiously returned to their feet, hunched in worry, waiting
silently. Richard met all their eyes before he began.
"I am Richard Rahl. I am the man you men decided to poison so as to
enslave me and thus force me to do your bidding.
"What you have done is a crime. While you may believe that you can
justify your action as proper, or think of it as merely a means of
persuasion, nothing can give you the right to threaten or take the life of
another who has done you no harm nor intended none. That, along with
torture, rape, and murder, is the means by which the Imperial Order rules."
"But we meant you no harm," one of the men called out in horror that
Richard would accuse them of such a ghastly crime. Other men spoke up in
agreement that Richard had it all wrong.
"You think I am a savage," Richard said in a tone of voice that
silenced them and put them back a step. "You think yourselves better than me
and so that somehow makes it all right to do this to me--and to try to do it
to the Mother Confessor--because you want something and, like petulant
children, you expect us to give it to you.
"The alternative you give me is death. The task you demand of me is
difficult beyond your imagination, making my death from your poison a very
real possibility, and likely. That is the reality of it.
"I already came close to dying from your poison. At the last possible
instant I was granted a temporary stay of my execution when one of you gave
me a provisional antidote. My friends and loved ones believed I would die
that night. You were the cause of it. You men consciously decided to poison
me, thereby accepting the fact that you might be killing me."
"No," a man insisted, his hands clasped in supplication, "we never
intended to harm you."
"If there was not a credible threat to my life, then why would I do as
you wish? If you truly mean me no harm and are not committed to killing me
if I don't go along with you, then prove it and give me the antidote so that
I can have my life back. It's my life, not yours."
This time no one spoke up.
"No? So you see, then, it is as I say. You men are committed to either
murder or enslavement. The only choice I have in it is which of those two it
will be. I will hear no more of your feelings about what you intended. Your
feelings do not absolve you of your very real deeds. Your actions, not your
feelings, speak the truth of your intent."
Richard clasped his hands behind his back as he paced slowly before the
men. "Now, I could do as you people are fond of doing, and tell myself that
I can't know if any of it is true. I could do as you would do, declare
myself inadequate to the task of knowing what's real and refuse to face
reality.
"But I am the Seeker of Truth because I do not try to hide from
reality. The choice to live demands that the truth be faced. I intend to do
that. I intend to live.
"You men must today decide what you will do, what will be the future of
your lives and the lives of the ones you love. You are going to have to deal
with reality, the same as I must, if you are to have a chance at life. Today
you will have to face a great deal of the truth, if you are to have that
which you seek."
Richard gestured to Owen. "I thought you said there were more men than
this. Where are the rest?"
Owen took a step forward. "Lord Rahl, to prevent violence, they turned
themselves over to the men of the Order."
Richard stared at the man. "Owen, after all you've told me, after all
those men have seen from the Order, how could they possibly believe such a
thing?"
"But how are we to know that this time it will not stop the violence?
We can't know the nature of reality or--"
"I told you before, with me you will confine yourself to what is, and
not repeat meaningless phrases you have memorized. If you have real facts I
want to hear them. I'm not interested in meaningless nonsense."
Owen pulled his small pack off his back. He fished around inside and
came up with a small canvas pouch. Tears welled up in his eyes as he gazed
at it.
"The men of the Order found out that there were men hiding out in the
hills. One of those men hiding with us has three daughters. In order to
prevent a cycle of violence, someone in our town told the men of the Order
which girls were his daughters.
"Every day the men of the Order tied a rope to a finger of each one of
these three girls. One man held the girl while another pulled on the rope
until her finger tore off. The men of the Order told a man from our town to
go to the hills and give the three fingers to our men. Every day he came."
Owen handed the bag to Richard. "These are the fingers from each of his
daughters."
"The man who brought them to our men was in a daze. They said he no
longer seemed human. He talked in a dead voice. He repeated what he had been
bidden to say. He had decided that since nothing was real, he would see
nothing and do as he was told.
"He said that the men of the Order told him that some of the people
from our town had given the names of the men in the hills and that they had
the children of those other men, as well. They said that unless the men
returned and gave themselves up, they would do the same to the other
children.
"A little more than half the men hiding in the hills could not stand to
think of themselves being the cause of such violence, and so they went back
to our town and gave themselves over to the men of the Order."
"Why are you giving me this?" Richard asked.
"Because," Owen said, his voice filled with tears, "I wanted you to
know why our men had no choice but to turn themselves in. They could not
stand to think of their loved ones suffering such terrible agony because of
them."
Richard looked out at the mournful men watching him. He felt his anger
boiling up inside, but he kept it in check as he spoke.
"I can understand what those men were trying to do by giving themselves
up. I can't fault them for it. It won't help, but I couldn't fault them for
desperately wanting to spare their loved ones from harm."
Despite his rage, Richard spoke in a soft voice. "I'm sorry that you
and your people are suffering such brutality at the hands of the Imperial
Order. But understand this: it is real, and the Order is the cause of it.
Those men of yours, if they did as the Order commanded or if they failed to,
were not the cause of violence. The responsibility for causing violence is
entirely the Order's. You did not go out and attack them. They came to you,
they attacked you, they enslave and torture and murder you."
Most of the men stood in slumped poses, staring at the ground.
"Do any of the rest of you have children?"
A number of the men nodded or mumbled that they did.
Richard ran his hand back through his hair. "Why haven't the rest of
you turned yourselves in, then? Why are you here and not trying to stop the
suffering in the same way the others did?"
The men looked at one another, some seeming confused by the question
while others appearing unable to put their reasons into words. Their sorrow,
their distress, even their hesitant resolve, were evident on their faces,
but they could not come up with words to explain why they would not turn
themselves in.
Richard held up the small canvas bag with the gruesome treasure, not
allowing them to avoid the issue. "You all knew about this. Why did you not
return as well?"
Finally one man spoke up. "I sneaked to the fields at sunset and talked
to a man working the crops, and asked what happened to those men who had
returned. He said that many of their children had already been taken away.
Others had died. All the men who had come in from the hills had been taken
away. None were allowed to return to their homes, to their families. What
good would it do for us to go back?"
"What good, indeed," Richard murmured. This was the first sign that
they grasped the true nature of the situation.
"You have to stop the Order," Owen said. "You must give us our freedom.
Why have you made us make this journey?"
Richard's initial spark of confidence dimmed. While they might have in
part grasped the truth of their troubles, they certainly weren't facing the
nature of any real solution. They simply wanted to be saved. They still
expected someone to do it for them: Richard.
The men all looked relieved that Owen had at last asked the question;
they were apparently too timid to ask it themselves. As they waited, some of
the men couldn't help stealing glances at Jennsen, standing to the rear.
Most of the men also appeared troubled by the statue looming behind Richard.
They could only see the back of it and didn't really know what it was meant
to be.
"Because," Richard finally told them, "in order for me to do as you
want, it's important that you all come to understand everything involved.
You expect me to simply do this for you. I can't. You are going to have to
help me in this or you and all of your loved ones are lost. If we are to
succeed, then you men must help the rest of your people come to understand
the things I have to tell you.
"You have gone this far, you have suffered this much, you have made
this much of a commitment. You realize that if you do the same as your
friends have been trying to do, if you apply those same useless solutions,
you, too, will be enslaved or murdered. You are running out of options. You
all have made a decision to at least try to succeed, to try to rid
yourselves of the brutes killing and enslaving your people.
"You men here are their last chance .. . their only chance.
"You must now hear the rest of what I have to tell you and then make up
your minds as to what will be your future."
The haggard, ragtag men, all dressed in worn and dirty clothes, all
looking like they'd had a very difficult time of living in the hills, either
spoke up or nodded that they would hear him out. Some even looked as if they
might be relieved by how directly and honestly he spoke to them. A few even
looked hungry for what he might say.
Three years ago from the coming autumn," Richard began, "I lived in a
place called Hartland. I was a woods guide. I had a peaceful life in a place
I loved among those I loved. I knew very little about the places beyond my
home. In some ways I was like you people before the Order came, so I can
understand some of what you felt about how things changed.
"Like you, I lived beyond a boundary that protected us from those who
would do us harm."
The men broke out in excited whispering, apparently surprised and
pleased that they could relate to him in this way, that they had something
so basic in common with him.
"What happened, then?" one of the men asked.
Richard couldn't help himself; he couldn't hold back the smile that
overwhelmed him.
"One day, in my woods"--he held his hand out to the side--"Kahlan
showed up. Like you, her people were in desperate trouble. She needed help.
Rather than poison me, though, she told me her story and how trouble was
coming our way. Much like you, the boundary protecting her people had failed
and a tyrant had invaded her homeland. She also came bearing a warning that
this man would soon come to my homeland, too, and conquer my people, my
friends, my loved ones."
All the faces turned toward Kahlan. The men stared openly, as if seeing
her for the first time. It looked to be astonishing to them that this
statuesque woman before them could be a savage, as they thought of
outsiders, and have the same kind of trouble they'd had. Richard was leaving
out vast chunks of the story, but he wanted to keep it simple enough to be
clear to these men.
"I was named the Seeker of Truth and given this sword to help me in
this important struggle." Richard lifted the hilt clear of the scabbard by
half the length of the blade, letting the men all see the polished steel.
Many grimaced at seeing such a weapon.
"Together, side by side, Kahlan and I struggled to stop the man who
sought to enslave or destroy us all. In a strange land, she was my guide,
not only helping me to fight against those who would kill us, but helping me
to come to understand the wider world I had never before considered. She
opened my eyes to what was out there, beyond the boundary that had protected
me and my people. She helped me to see the approaching shadow of tyranny and
know the true stakes involved--life itself.
"She made me live up to the challenge. Had she not, I would not be
alive today, and a great many more people would be dead or enslaved."
Richard had to turn away, then, at the flood of painful memories, at
the thought of all those lost in the struggle. At the victories so hard won.
He put his hand to the statue for support as he remembered the gruesome
murder of George Cypher, the man who had raised him, the man who, until that
struggle, Richard had always believed was his father. The pain of it, so
distant and far away, came rushing back again. He remembered the horror of
that time, of suddenly realizing that he would never again see the man he
dearly loved. He had forgotten until that moment how much he missed him.
Richard gathered his composure and turned back to the men. "In the end,
and only with Kahlan's help, I won the struggle against that tyrant I had
never known existed until the day she had come into my woods and warned me.
"That man was Darken Rahl, my father, a man I had never known."
The men stared in disbelief. "You never knew?" one asked in an
astonished voice.
Richard shook his head. "It's a very long story. Maybe another time I
will tell you men all of it. For now, I must tell you the important parts
that are relevant to you and those you love back there in your homes."
Richard looked at the ground before him, thinking, as he paced in front
of the disorderly knot of men.
"When I killed Darken Rahl, I did it to keep him from killing me and my
loved ones. He had tortured and murdered countless people and that alone
earned him death, but I had to kill him or he would have killed me. I didn't
know at the time that he was my real father or that in killing him, since I
was his heir, I would become the new Lord Rahl.
"Had he known who I was, he might not have been trying to kill me, but
he didn't know. I had information he wanted; he intended to torture it out
of me and then kill me. I killed him first.
"Since that time, I have come to learn a great deal. What I learned
connects us"--Richard gestured to the men and then placed the hand on his
own chest as he met their gazes--"in ways you must come to understand, as
well, if you are to succeed in this new struggle.
"The land where I grew up, Kahlan's land, and the land of D'Hara, all
make up the New World. As you have learned, this vast land down here outside
where you grew up is called the Old World. After I became Lord Rahl, the
barrier protecting us from the Old World failed, much as your own boundary
failed. When it did, Emperor Jagang of the Imperial Order, down here in the
Old World, used the opportunity to invade the New World, my home, much as he
invaded your home. We've been fighting him and his troops for over two
years, trying to defeat them or at least to drive them back to the Old
World.
"The barrier that failed had protected us from the Order, or men like
them, for around three thousand years, longer, even, than you were
protected. Before that barrier was placed at the end of a great war, the
enemy at the time, from the Old World, had used magic to create people
called dream walkers."
The men fell to whispering. They had heard the name, but they didn't
really understand it and speculated on what it could mean.
"Dream walkers," Richard explained, when they had quieted, "could enter
a person's mind in order to control them. There was no defense. Once a dream
walker took over your mind, you became his slave, unable to resist his
commands. The people back then were desperate.
"A man named Alric Rahl, my ancestor, came up with a way to protect
people's minds from being taken over by the dream walkers. He was not only
the Lord Rahl who ruled D'Hara at the time, but he was also a great wizard.
Through his ability he created a bond that when spoken earnestly or given in
a more simple form with heartfelt sincerity, protected people from dream
walkers entering their minds. Alric Rahl's link of magic to his people,
through this bond, protected them.
"The devotion you men all gave is the formal declaration of that bond.
It has been given by the D'Haran people to their Lord Rahl for three
thousand years."
Some of the men in front stepped forward, their faces etched with
anxiety. "Are we protected, then, from the dream walkers, Lord Rahl, because
we gave this oath? Are we protected from the dream walkers entering our
minds and taking us?"
Richard shook his head. "You and your people need no protection. You
are already protected in another way."
Relief swept through the crowd of men. Some gripped the shoulder of
another, or placed a hand in relief on a friend's back. They looked as if
they feared that dream walkers were stalking them, and they had just been
spared at the last instant.
"But how is it that we can be protected?" Owen asked.
Richard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "Well, that's the
part that in a way connects us. You see, as I understand it, magic needs
balance in order to function."
There were knowing nods all around, as if these pristinely ungifted men
all had an intimate understanding of magic.
"When Alric Rahl used magic to create this bond in order to protect his
people," Richard went on, "there needed to always be a Lord Rahl to complete
the bond, to maintain its power. Not all wizards bear children who also
possess this gifted ability, so part of what Alric Rahl did when he created
this bond was to make it so that the Lord Rahl would always bear one son who
had magic, who had the gift, and could complete this bond with the people of
D'Hara. In this way they would always be protected."
Richard held up a finger to make his point as he swept his gaze over
the crowd of men. "What they didn't know at the time was that this magic
inadvertently created its own balance. While the Lord Rahl always produced a
gifted heir--a wizard like him--it was only discovered later that he also
occasionally produced offspring who were entirely without any magic."
Richard could see by the blank looks that the men didn't grasp what he
was telling them. He imagined that for people living such isolated lives,
his story must seem rather confusing, if not far-fetched. He remembered his
own confusion about magic before the boundary had come down and he'd met
Kahlan. He hadn't been raised around magic and he still didn't understand
most of it himself. He'd been born with both sides of the gift, and yet he
didn't know how to control it.
"You see," he said, "only some people have magic--are gifted, as it's
called. But all people are born with at least a very tiny spark of the gift,
even though they can't manipulate magic. Until just recently, everyone
thought of these people as ungifted. You see? The gifted, like wizards and
sorceresses, can manipulate magic, and the rest of the people can't, so they
were believed to be ungifted.
"But it turns out that this isn't accurate, since there is an
infinitesimal spark of the gift in everyone born. This tiny spark of the
gift is actually what allows people to interact with the magic in the world
around them, that is, with things and creatures that have magical
properties, and with people who are gifted in a more comprehensive
sense--those who do have the ability to manipulate magic."
"Some people in Bandakar have magic, too," a man said. "True magic.
Only those who have never seen--"
"No," Richard said, cutting him off. He didn't want them losing track
of his account. "Owen told me about what you people believe is magic. That's
not magic, that's mysticism. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking
about real magic that produces real results in the real world. Forget what
you've been taught about magic, about how faith supposedly creates what you
believe in and that is real magic. It's not real. It's just the fanciful
illusion of magic in people's imaginations."
"But it is real," someone said in a respectful but firm voice. "More
real than what you see and feel."
Richard turned a harsh look on the men. "If it's so real, then why did
you have to use a known poison on me that was mixed by a man who had worked
his whole life with herbs? Because you know what's real, that's why; when it
was vital to your self-interest, to your lives, you resorted to dealing in
reality, to what you know really works."
Richard pointed back at Kahlan. "The Mother Confessor has real magic.
It's no fanciful curse put on someone and when they die ten years later
people believe the curse was the cause. She has real magic that is in
elemental ways linked to death, so it affects even you. She can touch
someone, with this real magic, and in an instant they will be dead. Not ten
years from now--right now, on the spot."
Richard stood resolutely in front of the men, gazing from eye to eye.
"If someone doesn't believe that is real magic, then let's have a test. Let
them perform their faith-based magic and put a spell on me--to kill me right
here and now. After they've done that, then they will come forward and be
touched by the Mother Confessor's very real, lethal power. Then everyone
else will be able to see the results and judge for themselves." He looked
from face to face. "Anyone willing to take up the test? Any magicians among
all you ungifted people willing to try it?"
When the men remained silent, no one moving, Richard went on.
"So, it would seem that you men do have some understanding of what's
real and what isn't. Keep that in mind. Learn from it.
"Now, I told you how the Lord Rahl always bore a son with magic so he
could pass on the rule of D'Hara and his gifted ability in order to make the
bond work. But, as I said, the bond that Alric Rahl created may have had an
unintended consequence.
"Only later was it discovered that the Lord Rahl, possibly as a means
of balance, also sometimes produced offspring that were entirely without any
magic--not just ungifted in the way most people are, but unlike any people
ever born before: they were pristinely ungifted. These pristinely ungifted
people had absolutely no spark of the gift whatsoever.
"Because of that, because they were pristinely ungifted, they were
unable to interact with the real magic in the world. They were unable to be
touched by magic at all. For them, magic might as well not exist because
they were not born with the ability to see it or to interact with it. You
might say they were like a bird that could not fly. They looked like a bird,
they had feathers, they ate bugs, but they couldn't fly.
"Back then in that time, three thousand years ago, after the bond had
been created to protect people from dream walkers in the war, the wizards
finally succeeded in placing a barrier between the Old and the New World.
Because those in the Old World could no longer come to the New World to wage
war, the great war ended. Peace finally came.
"The people of the New World discovered, though, that they had a
problem. These pristinely ungifted offspring of the Lord Rahl passed this
trait on to their children. Every offspring of a marriage with at least one
of these pristinely ungifted partners bears pristinely ungifted
children--always, every time. As these offspring married and had children
and then grandchildren and then great-grandchildren, as there were more and
more of them, that pristinely ungifted trait began spreading throughout the
population.
"People, at the time, were frightened because they depended on magic.
Magic was part of their world. Magic was what had saved them from the dream
walkers. Magic had created the barrier that protected them from the horde
from the Old World. Magic had ended the war. Magic healed people, found lost
children, produced beautiful creations of art that inspired and brought joy.
Magic could help guide people in the course of future events.
"Some towns grew up around a gifted person who could serve people's
needs. Many gifted people earned a living performing such services. In some
things, magic gave people control over nature and thus made the lives of
everyone better. Things accomplished with the aid of magic improved the
living conditions of nearly everyone. Magic was a force of individual
creation and thus individual accomplishment. Nearly everyone derived some
benefit from it.
"This is not to say that magic was or is indispensable, but that it was
a useful aid, a tool. Magic was like their right arm. Yet it's the mind of
man, not his magic, that is indispensable--much like you could survive
without your right arm, but you couldn't survive without your mind. But
magic had become intertwined in the lives of everyone, so many believed that
it was absolutely indispensable.
"The people came to feel that this new threat--the pristinely ungifted
trait spreading through the population--would be the end of everything they
knew, everything that they thought was important, that it would be the end
of their most vital protection--magic."
Richard gazed out at all the faces, waiting to make sure that the men
had grasped the essence of the story, that they understood how desperate the
people must have been, and why.
"So, what did the people do about these new pristinely ungifted people
among them?" a man in the back asked.
In a quiet tone, Richard said, "Something terrible."
He pulled the book from a leather pouch on his belt and held it up for
all the men to see as he again paced before them. The clouds, laden with
storms of snow, rolled silently through the frigid valley pass, bound for
the peaks above them.
"This book is called The Pillars of Creation. That's what the wizards
back then called these pristinely ungifted people--pillars of Creation--
because they had the power, with this trait that they passed along to their
offspring, to alter the very nature of mankind. They were the foundation of
an entirely new kind of people--people without any connection to magic.
"I only just a short time ago came across this book. It's meant for the
Lord Rahl, and others, so that they will know about these pristinely
ungifted people who are unaffected by magic. The book tells the history of
how these people came about--through those born to the Lord Rahl--along with
the history of what was discovered about them. It also reveals what the
people back then, thousands of years ago, did about these pillars of
Creation."
Men rubbed their arms in the cold air as Richard slowly paced before
them. They all looked caught up in the story.
"So," Owen asked, "what did they do?"
Richard came to a stop and stood watching their eyes before he spoke.
"They banished them."
Astonished whispering broke out among the men. They were stunned to
hear the final solution. These people understood banishment, they understood
it all too well, and they could sympathize with these banished people of so
long ago.
"That's terrible," a man in front said, shaking his head.
Another frowned and held up a hand. "Weren't these pillars of Creation
related to some of the other people? Weren't they part of the towns? Didn't
the people feel sorrow at banishing these ungifted people?"
Richard nodded. "Yes. They were friends and family. Those banished
people were intimately intertwined in the lives of nearly everyone. The book
tells how heavy hearted the people felt at the decision that had been
reached about these pristinely ungifted people. It must have been an awful
time, a dreadful choice that no one liked, but those in charge at the time
decided that in order for them to preserve their way of life, to preserve
magic and all it meant to them, to preserve that attribute of man, rather
than value the lives of individuals for who they were, they had to banish
these pristinely ungifted people.
"What's more, they also decreed that all future offspring of the Lord
Rahl, except his gifted heir, should be put to death to insure that no
pillar of Creation ever again came among them."
This time there was no whispering. The men looked saddened by the story
of these mysterious people and the terrible solution of how to deal with
them. Heads hung as the men thought about what it must have been like back
in such a grim time.
Finally, a man's head came up. His brow twitched. He finally asked the
question Richard expected to be asked, the question he had been waiting for.
"But where were these pillars of Creation banished to? Where were they
sent?"
Richard watched the men as other eyes turned up, curious about the
historic mystery, waiting for him to go on.
"These people were not affected by magic," Richard reminded them. "And
the barrier holding back the Old World was a barrier created of magic."
"They sent them through the barrier!" a man guessed aloud.
Richard nodded. "Many wizards had died and given their power into that
barrier so that their people would be protected from those in the Old World
who wanted to rule them and to end magic. That was a large part of what the
war had been fought over--those in the Old World had wanted to eradicate
magic from mankind.
"So, those people in the New World sent these pristinely ungifted
people, these people without any magic, through the barrier to the Old
World.
"They never knew what became of them, those friends and family and
loved ones they had banished, because they had been sent beyond a barrier
that none of them could cross. It was thought that they would establish new
lives, would make a new beginning. But, because the barrier was there, and
it was enemy territory beyond, the people of the New World never knew what
became of those banished people.
"Finally, a few years ago, that barrier came down. If these banished
people had made a life for themselves in the Old World, they would have had
children and spread their pristinely ungifted attribute"-- Richard lifted
his arms in a shrug--"but there is no trace of them. The people down here
are just the same as the people up in the New World--some born gifted but
all born with at least that tiny spark of the gift that enables them to
interact with magic.
"Those people from ancient times seemed just to have vanished."
"So now we know," Owen reasoned as he stared off in thought, "that all
those people sent to the Old World so long ago tragically died out... or
maybe were killed."
"I had thought as much myself," Richard said. He turned and faced the
men, waiting until all eyes were on him before going on.
"But then I found them. I found those long-lost people."
Excited whispering broke out again. The men appeared inspired by the
prospect of such people surviving against all odds.
"Where are they, then, Lord Rahl," a man asked, "these people with whom
you share ancestry? These people who had to endure such cruel banishment and
hardship?"
Richard leveled a cutting gaze at the men. "Come with me, and I will
tell you what became of these people."
Richard led them around the statue, to the front, where, for the first
time, they could see the full view of the sentinel in stone. The men were
awestruck at finally seeing the statue from the front. They talked excitedly
among themselves about how real it looked, about how they could clearly see
the stalwart features of the man's face.
By the utter shock in their voices and by what the men were saying,
Richard got the distinct impression that they'd never seen a statue before,
at least no statue as monumental as this one. It appeared that for these men
the statue must be something akin to a manifestation of magic, rather than,
as Richard knew it to be, a manifestation of man's ability.
Richard placed a hand on the cold stone of the base. "This is an
ancient statue of an Old World wizard named Kaja-Rang. It was carved, in
part, as a tribute to the man because he was a great and powerful wizard."
Owen lifted a hand to interrupt. "But I thought the people in the Old
World wanted to be without magic? Why would they have a great wizard--and
why, especially, would they pay a tribute to such a man of magic?"
Richard smiled at Owen catching the contradiction. "People don't always
act in a consistent manner. What's more, the more irrational are your
beliefs, the more glaring the inconsistencies. You men, for example, try to
gloss over incongruities in your behavior by applying your convictions
selectively. You claim that nothing is real, or that we cannot know the true
nature of reality, and yet you fear what the Order does to you--you believe
firmly enough in the reality of what they're doing that you want it to stop.
"If nothing were real, then you would have no reason to want to stop
the Imperial Order. In fact, it's counter to your professed beliefs to try
to stop them, or to even feel that their presence is real, much less
detrimental, since you assert that man is inadequate at the task of knowing
reality.
"Yet you grasp the reality of what's happening at the hands of the men
of the Order, and know very well that it's abhorrent, so you selectively
suspend the precepts of your beliefs in order to send Owen to poison me in
an attempt to get me to rid you of your very real problem."
Some of the men looked confused by what Richard said while others
looked to be embarrassed. A few looked astonished. None looked willing to
challenge him, so they let him go on without interrupting.
"The people in the Old World were the same way--they still are. They
claimed they didn't want magic, and yet when faced with that reality, they
didn't want to do without it. The Imperial Order is like this. They've come
to the New World claiming to be a champion of freeing mankind of magic,
proclaiming themselves to be noble for holding such a goal, and yet they use
magic in the pursuit of this professed goal. They contend that magic is
evil, and yet they embrace it.
"Their leader, Emperor Jagang, uses those with magic to help accomplish
his ends, among which, he claims, is the eradication of magic. Jagang is a
dream walker descended from those dream walkers of so long ago. His ability
as a dream walker is magic, yet he does not disqualify himself from leading
his empire. Even though he has magic, which he claims makes people unfit to
have any say in the future, he calls himself Jagang the Just.
"Despite what they declare they believe, their goal is to rule people,
plain and simple. They seek power but dress it up in noble-sounding robes.
Every tyrant thinks he is different. They are all the same. They all rule by
brute force."
Owen was frowning, trying to grasp it all. "So, those in the Old World
did not live by their word, by what they claimed they believed. They lived
in conflict. They preached that man was better without magic, but they
continued to want to use magic."
"That's right."
Owen gestured up at the statue. "What of this man, then? Why is he
here, if he is against what they preached?"
Dark clouds roiled above the towering statue. The still air hung cold,
heavy, and damp. It felt as if a storm were holding back its onslaught,
waiting to hear the rest.
"This man is here because he fought to save the people of the Old World
from something they feared more than magic itself," Richard said.
He gazed up at the resolute face with its eyes fixed forever on the
place called the Pillars of Creation.
"This man," Richard said in a quiet voice, "this wizard, Kaja-Rang,
collected all of those pristinely ungifted people, those pillars of
Creation, who had been banished down here from the New World, along with any
people who while they lived here had joined with them, and he sent them all
there."
Richard pointed off into the distance behind the statue.
"He put all those people in that place, protected by the mountains all
around, and then he placed a boundary of death before them, across this
pass, so that they could never again come out to be among the rest of the
people of the world.
"Kaja-Rang gave these people their name: the Bandakar. The name,
bandakar, is from a very old language called High D'Haran. It means 'the
banished.' This man, Kaja-Rang, is the one who sealed them in and saved his
people from the pristinely ungifted, from those without magic."
"You," Richard said to the men before him, "are the descendants of
those banished people. You are the descendants of Alric Rahl, of the people
sent into exile in the Old World. You are all descendants of the House of
Rahl. Your ancestors and mine are the same men. You are the banished
people."
The top of the pass before the statue of Kaja-Rang was dead silent. The
men stared in shock.
And then pandemonium broke out. Richard made no effort to stop them, to
bring them to be quiet. Rather, he stood close beside Kahlan as he let them
take it in. He wanted to give them the time they needed to come to grasp the
enormity of what he had told them.
Arms in the air, some men cried out with the outrage at what they'd
heard, others wailed with the horror of the story, some wept in sorrow, many
argued, a few protested various points that others answered, while yet
others repeated key elements to one another almost as if to hear the words
again so they could test them, agreeing finally that it might very well be
so.
But through it all, they all slowly began to grasp the enormity of what
they'd heard. They all began to hear the ring of truth in the story.
Chattering like magpies, all talking at once, they expressed disbelief,
outrage, wonder, and even fear, as they came to the heady comprehension of
who they really were.
At the whispered urging of some among the group, after having gotten
over the initial shock, the men all quieted and at last turned back to
Richard, hungry to know more.
"You are this gifted man, the favored heir, the Lord Rahl, and we are
the ones banished by your kind," one of the men said, expressing what looked
to be a common fear, the unspoken question of what this would mean for them.
"That's right," Richard said. "I am the Lord Rahl, the leader of the
D'Haran Empire, and you are the descendants of the pillars of Creation who
were banished. I am gifted as have been my ancestors, every Lord Rahl before
me. You are ungifted as were your ancestors."
Standing before the statue of Kaja-Rang, the man who had banished them,
Richard looked out at all the tense faces.
"That banishment was a grievous wrong. It was immoral. As Lord Rahl, I
denounce the banishment and declare it forever ended. You are no longer the
Empire of Bandakar, the banished ones, you are now once again, as you once
were, D'Harans, if you choose to be."
Every man seemed to hold his breath, waiting to see if he meant it, or
would add more, or if he might even recant it.
Richard put his arm around Kahlan's waist as he calmly gazed out at all
the hopeful expressions.
Richard smiled. "Welcome home."
And then they were all falling at his feet, kissing his boots, his
pants, his hands, and, for those who couldn't crowd in close enough, the
ground before him. In short order, they were kissing the hem of Kahlan's
dress.
They had found a relation, and were in turn welcoming him among them.
As the men crowded around their feet, openly offering their gratitude
for ending their sentence of banishment, Richard shared a sidelong glance
with Kahlan. Cara looked decidedly displeased by the display but didn't
interfere.
Trying to bring a halt to the tearful tribute, Richard gestured for the
men to get up. "There is much more to tell you. Listen to me, now."
The smiling, tearful men drew back, hands clasped while gazing at him
as if he were a long-lost brother. There were a few older men among the
crowd and some of middle age, but most ranged from young, like Owen, to a
little older, like Richard. They were all men who had been through terrible
times.
The most difficult part still lay ahead; Richard had to make them face
up to what was to come.
Looking over at Jennsen, standing alone off to the side, he gestured
for her to come forward.
Jennsen emerged from the shadows of the statue, catching the attention
of all eyes as she made her way toward Richard. The men all watched her
coming into the light. She looked so beautiful that Richard couldn't help
smiling as she stepped across the rocks. Pulling on a red ringlet, she cast
a shy glance at the men.
When Richard held an arm out, she sought protection under the shelter
of that arm as she gazed nervously out at men who were like her in one
important way.
"This is my sister, Jennsen Rahl," Richard said. "She was born
pris-tinely ungifted, just like all of you. Our father tried to kill her, as
has been done for thousands of years with ungifted offspring."
"And you?" a man asked, still skeptical. "You will not reject her?"
Richard hugged Jennsen with the one arm. "For what? For what crime
should I reject her? Because she was born a woman, instead of a man like me?
Because she isn't as tall as me? Because she has red hair, instead of hair
like mine? Because her eyes are blue and not gray? ... Because she is
ungifted?"
The men shifted their weight to the other foot or folded their arms.
Some, after all he had already said, averted their eyes, looking embarrassed
to have even asked the question.
"She's beautiful, smart, and uses her head. She, too, fights for her
right to live, and does so through reasoned means. She is as you men,
pristinely ungifted. Because she shares an understanding of the value of
life, I embrace her."
Richard heard the bleat and turned. Betty, her rope trailing behind,
trotted up the rise. Jennsen rolled her eyes as Betty came close, peering
up, her tail wagging in a blur.
Jennsen snatched up the rope, inspecting the end. Richard could see
that it had been chewed through.
"Betty," she scolded, shaking the end of the rope at the unrepentant
goat, "what did you do?"
Betty bleated her answer, clearly proud of herself.
Jennsen heaved a sigh as she shrugged an apology at Richard.
The men had all taken several steps back, murmuring their dread to one
another.
"I'm not a witch," Jennsen told them in a heated tone. "Just because I
have red hair that doesn't mean I'm a witch."
The men looked thoroughly unconvinced.
"I've had dealings with a very real witch woman," Richard told them. "I
can assure you, red hair is no mark of a witch. It just isn't true."
"It is true," one of the men insisted. He pointed at Betty. "There is
her attendant spirit."
Richard's brow wrinkled. "Attendant spirit?"
"That's right," another told him. "A witch always has a familiar with
her. She called her attendant spirit and it came to her."
"Called her?" Jennsen brandished the frayed end of the rope at the men.
"I tied her to a tree and she chewed through her rope."
Another man shook his finger at her. "You called her with magic and she
came."
Fists at her sides, Jennsen took a step toward the men. They took a
collective step back.
"You men all had family and friends--a community of people. I had no
friends and could have none because my mother and I had to run from my
father my whole life to keep from being caught. He would have tortured and
murdered me had he caught me--the same as he would have done with you. I
could have no childhood friends, so my mother gave me Betty. Betty was just
newborn; we grew up together. Betty chewed through her rope because I'm the
only family she's ever known and she simply wanted to be close to me.
"I was banished from everyone for my crime of birth, just like your
ancestors. You all know the injustice of such banishment and you know its
pain. And now you foolish men would banish me from your acceptance because I
have red hair and a goat as a pet? You are spineless cowards and hypocrites!
"First you poison the only person in the world brave enough to end our
banishment from the rest of mankind and now you fear me and reject me
because of silly superstitions. If I did have magic, I'd burn you all to a
cinder for your cruel attitudes!"
Richard put a hand on her shoulder and drew her back. "It will be all
right," he whispered to her. "Just let me talk to them."
"You tell us that you're a wizard," an older man in the back called
out, "and then you expect us to believe it's so--on faith--because you say
it is, while you claim that we should not hold to our beliefs, such as our
fear that she could be a witch with her familiar, because it's held only on
faith."
"That's right," another said. "You claim your belief is in real magic,
while you dismiss our belief. A lot of what you say makes sense, but I don't
agree with all of it."
There could be no partial agreement. To reject part of the truth was to
reject it all. Richard considered his options, how he could convince people
without magic, who could not see magic, that real magic existed. From their
perspective, he seemed guilty of the same error he was telling them they
were making. How could he demonstrate a rainbow of color to the blind?
"You have a point," Richard said. "Give me a moment and I will show you
the reality of the magic I talk about."
He motioned Cara closer. "Get me the warning beacon," he said in a
confidential tone.
Cara immediately took off down the hill. He saw that Jennsen's angry
blue eyes were filled with tears but she didn't cry. Kahlan pulled her back
farther as Richard addressed the men.
"There is more I must tell you--some things you need to understand. I
have ended the banishment, but that does not mean that I unconditionally
accept you back as one of our people."
"But you said that we were welcomed home," Owen said.
"I'm stating the obvious--that you have a right to your own life. Out
of goodwill I welcome you all to be part of D'Hara if you wish-- part of
what D'Hara now stands for. But by welcoming you back, that does not mean
that I welcome people unconditionally.
"All men should be free to live their own lives, but make no mistake,
there is a vast difference between that freedom and anarchy.
"If we triumph in our struggle, you are welcome to be free people of a
D'Haran Empire which holds a belief in specific values. For example, you can
think whatever you wish and try to persuade others of the value of your
beliefs, but you cannot act on a view that those who fight to gain that
freedom are savages or criminals, even though you expect to enjoy the fruits
of their struggle. At minimum, they have earned your respect and gratitude.
Their lives are no less than yours and are not expendable for your benefit.
That is slavery."
"But you have savage ways and engage in violence for a land we have
never even seen," one of the younger men said. He pointed an arm back toward
Bandakar. "The only land we have ever known is here and we unconditionally
reject your love of violence."
"Land?" Richard spread his arms. "We do not fight for land. We are
loyal to an ideal--an ideal of liberty wherever man lives. We do not guard
territory, bleed for a piece of dirt. We don't fight because we love
violence. We fight for our freedom as individuals to live our own lives, to
pursue our own survival, our own happiness.
"Your unconditional rejection of violence makes you smugly think of
yourselves as noble, as enlightened, but in reality it is nothing less than
abject moral capitulation to evil. Unconditional rejection of self-defense,
because you think it's a supposed surrender to violence, leaves you no
resort but begging for mercy or offering appeasement.
"Evil grants no mercy, and to attempt to appease it is nothing more
than a piecemeal surrender to it. Surrender to evil is slavery at best,
death at worst. Thus, your unconditional rejection of violence is really
nothing more than embracing death as preferable to life.
"You will achieve what you embrace.
"The right, the absolute necessity, of vengeance against anyone who
initiates force against you is fundamental to survival. The morality of a
people's self-defense is in its defense of each individual's right to life.
It's an intolerance of violence, made real by an unwavering willingness to
crush any who would launch violence against you. The unconditional
determination to destroy any who would initiate force against you is an
exaltation of the value of life. Refusing to surrender your life to any thug
or tyrant who lays claim to it is in fact embracing life itself.
"If you are unwilling to defend your right to your own lives, then you
are merely like mice trying to argue with owls. You think their ways are
wrong. They think you are dinner.
"The Imperial Order preaches that mankind is corrupt and evil, and
therefore life is of little value. Their actions certainly bear this out.
They moralize that you can only win salvation and happiness in some other
world, and then only by sacrificing your life in this one.
"Generosity is fine, if it's by your free choice, but a belief in the
primacy of self-sacrifice as a moral requisite is nothing less than the
sanctioning of slavery. Those who tell you that it is your responsibility
and duty to sacrifice are trying to blind you to the chains they are
slipping around your neck.
"As D'Harans, you will not be required to sacrifice your life to
another, and by the same token you cannot demand that others sacrifice
themselves to you. You may believe as you wish, you may even feel that you
cannot take up arms and fight directly for our survival, but you must help
support our cause and you may not contribute materially or spiritually to
the destruction of our values and therefore our lives-- that is treason and
will be treated as such.
"The Imperial Order has violently invaded innocent lands, like yours.
They have enslaved, tortured, raped, and murdered in order to seize rule.
They have done no less in the New World. They have forfeited their right to
be heard. There is no moral dilemma involved, no ethical question open to
debate; they must be ground into dust."
A man stepped forward. "But common decency in dealing with our fellow
man requkes that we must show them mercy for their misguided ways."
"There is no greater value than life--and that's what you partially
recognize by your confused notion of granting mercy. Their conscious,
deliberate act of murder takes the irreplaceable value of life from another.
A murderer, by his own choice to kill, forfeits the right to his own life.
Mercy for such evil is nothing short of excusing it and thus allowing evil
to prevail--it codifies the taking of innocent life by not making the
murderer forfeit their own guilty life.
"Mercy grants value to the life of a killer, while, at the same time,
it strips away the value of the life of the innocent victim. It makes the
life of a killer more important than the life of an innocent. It is thus a
trade of the good to the evil. It is the victory of death over life."
"So," Owen wondered aloud, "because the Order has attacked your land
and murdered its people, you intend to try to kill every living person in
the Old World?"
"No. The Order is evil and from the Old World. That does not mean that
the people of the Old World are evil simply because they happen to have been
born on a patch of ground ruled by evil men. Some actively support these
rulers and therefore embrace evil, but not everyone does. Many of the people
in the Old World are also the victims of the rule of the Imperial Order and
suffer greatly under its brutality. Many struggle against this evil rule. As
we speak, many risk their lives to rid themselves of these evil men. We
fight for the same thing: liberty.
"Where those who seek liberty were born is irrelevant. We believe in
the value of the individual's life. That means that where someone lives does
not make them evil--it's their beliefs and actions that matter.
"But make no mistake--many people are an active part of the Imperial
Order and its murderous ways. Actions must have consequences. The Order must
be eradicated."
"Surely, you would allow some compromise," one of the older men said.
"If, hoping to appease it, you willingly compromise with unrepentant
evil, you only allow such evil to sink its fangs into you; from that day on
its venom will course through your veins until it finally kills you."
"But that's too harsh a sentiment," the man said. "It's just being
stubborn and obstructing a constructive path. There is always room for
compromise."
Richard tapped his thumb against his chest. "You men decided to give me
poison. That poison will kill me; that makes it evil. How would you suggest
I compromise with poison?"
No one had an answer.
"In trade between willing parties who share moral values and who deal
fairly and honestly with one another, compromise over something like price
is legitimate. In matters of morality or truth, there can be no compromise.
"Compromising with murderers, which is precisely what you are
suggesting, grants them moral equivalence where none can rightfully exist.
Moral equivalence says that you are no better than they; therefore, their
belief--that they should be able to torture, rape, or murder you-- is just
as morally valid as your view--that you have the right to live free of their
violence. Moral compromise rejects the concept of right and wrong. It says
that everyone is equal, all desires are equally valid, all action is equally
valid, so everyone should compromise to get along.
"Where could you compromise with those who torture, rape, and murder
people? In the number of days a week you will be tortured? In the number of
men to be allowed to rape your loved ones? In how many of your family are to
be murdered?
"No moral equivalence exists in that situation, nor can it exist, so
there can be no compromise, only suicide.
"To even suggest compromise can exist with such men is to sanction
murder."
Most of the men appeared shocked and startled to hear someone speaking
to them in such a straightforward manner. They seemed to be losing interest
in their supply of empty adages. Some of the men looked to be moved by
Richard's words. A few even looked inspired by their clarity; he could see
it in their eyes, as if they were seeing things for the first time.
Cara came up behind Richard and handed him the warning beacon. Richard
wasn't sure, but it seemed as if the inky black had taken over more of the
surface of the small figure than the last time he'd seen it. Inside, the
sand continued to trickle down onto the accumulated pile in the bottom.
"Kaja-Rang placed the boundary across this pass to seal your people in.
He is the one who named you. He knew your people shunned violence and he
feared you might end up being prey to criminals. He is the one who gave you
a way to banish them from your land so that you could continue to have the
kind of life you wanted. He told your people of the passage through the
boundary so that you could rid yourselves of criminals if you rallied the
will."
Owen looked troubled. "If this great wizard, Kaja-Rang, didn't want our
people among the population of the Old World because we would mix with them
and spread our pristinely ungifted trait, as you call it, then what about
the criminals we banish? Sending those men out into the world would cause
the thing they feared. Making this pass through the boundary and telling our
ancestors about it would seem to defeat the whole purpose of the boundary."
Richard smiled. "Very good, Owen. You are beginning to think for
yourself."
Owen smiled. Richard gestured up at the statue of Kaja-Rang.
"You see where he's looking? It's a place called the Pillars of
Creation. It's a deathly hot place where nothing lives--a land stalked by
death. The boundary that Kaja-Rang placed had sides to it. When you sent
people out of your land, through the boundary, the walls of death to the
sides prevented those banished people from escaping into the world at large.
They had only one way they could go: the Pillars of Creation.
"Even with water and supplies, and knowing where you must go to get
past it, trying to go through the valley known as the Pillars of Creation is
almost certain death. Without water and supplies, without knowing the land,
without knowing how to travel it and where you must go to escape such a
place, those you banished faced certain death."
The men stared, wide-eyed. "Then, when we banished a criminal, we were
actually executing them," one of the men said.
"That's right."
"This Kaja-Rang tricked us, then," the man added. "Tricked us into what
was actually the killing of those men."
"You think that a terrible trick?" Richard asked. "You people were
deliberately setting known criminals loose on the world to prey on
unsuspecting people. You were knowingly setting free violent men, and
condemning unsuspecting people outside your land to be victims of violence.
Rather than put murderers to death, you were, as far as you knew-- had you
given it any thought--knowingly assisting them in going on to kill others.
In the blind attempt to avoid violence at all cost, you actually championed
it.
"You told yourselves that those other people didn't matter, because
they weren't enlightened, like you, that you were better than they because
you were above violence, that you unconditionally rejected violence. If you
even thought about it, you considered these people beyond the boundary to be
savages, their lives unimportant. For all intents and purposes, you were
sacrificing their innocent lives for the lives of those men you knew to be
evil.
"What Kaja-Rang was doing, besides keeping the pristinely ungifted from
being at large in the world, was executing those criminals you banished
before they could harm other people. You think yourselves noble in rejecting
violence, but your actions would have fostered it. Only Kaja-Rang's actions
prevented it."
"Dear Creator. It is far worse than that." Owen sank down, sitting
heavily. "Far worse than you even realize."
Other men, too, looked to be stricken with horror. Some had to lower
themselves to the ground as Owen had. Others, their faces in their hands,
turned away, or walked off a few paces.
"What do you mean?" Richard asked.
Owen looked up, his face ashen. "The story I told you about our land
... about our town and the other great cities? How in my town we all lived
together and were happy with our lives?" Richard nodded. "Not all were."
Kahlan crossed her arms and leaned toward Owen. "What do you mean, not
all were?"
Owen lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. "Some wanted more than our
simple joyful life. Some people ... well, they wanted to change things. They
said they wanted to make things better. They wanted to improve our life, to
build places for themselves, even though this is against our ways."
"Owen is right," an older man said in a grim tone. "In my time I have
seen a great many of these people who were unable to endure what some called
the chafing principles of our empire."
"And what happened when people wanted to make these changes, or could
not endure the principles of your empire?" Richard asked.
Owen looked to each side, to the other dispirited faces. "The great
speakers renounced their ideas. The Wise One said they would only bring
strife among us. Their hopes for new ways were turned aside and they were
denounced." Owen swallowed. "So these people decided they would leave
Bandakar. They went out of our land, taking the path through the opening in
the boundary, to find a new life for themselves. Not a single one ever
returned to us."
Richard wiped a hand across his face. "Then they died looking for their
new life, a better life than what you had to offer."
"But you don't understand." Owen rose to his feet. "We are like those
people." He swept his arm back at his men. "We have refused to go back and
give ourselves over to the men of the Order, even though we know that people
are being tortured because we hide. We know it will not stop the Order, so
we don't go back.
"We have gone against the wishes of our great speakers, and the Wise
One, to try to save our people. We have been denounced for what we choose to
do. We have gone out of the pass to seek information, to find a way to rid
ourselves of the Imperial Order. Do you see? We are much the same as those
others throughout our history. Like those others, we chose to leave and try
to change things rather than to endure the way things were."
"Then perhaps you are beginning to see," Richard said, "that everything
you were taught showed you only how to embrace death, not life. Perhaps you
see that what you called the teaching of enlightenment was no more than
blinders pulled over your eyes."
Richard put his hand on Owen's shoulder. He gazed down at the statue of
himself in his other hand and then looked around at the tense faces.
"You men are the ones left after all the rest have failed the tests.
You alone got this far. You alone have started to use your minds to try to
find a solution for you and your loved ones. You have much more to learn,
but you have at least started to make some of the right choices. You must
not stop now; you must meet with courage what I will call upon you to do, if
you are to truly have a chance to save your loved ones."
For the first time they looked at least a little proud. They had been
recognized, not for how well they repeated meaningless sayings, but for the
decisions they reached on their own.
Jennsen was frowning in thought. "Richard, why couldn't people get back
in through the passage out through the boundary? If they wanted to go off
and have a new life but then discovered that they would have to go through
the Pillars of Creation, why wouldn't they go back, at least to get
supplies, to get what they needed so they could make it through?"
"That's right," Kahlan said. "George Cypher went through the boundary
at Kings' Port and then returned. Adie said that the boundary had to have a
passage, a vent, like where these people banished criminals, so why couldn't
people come back in? There was a pass out, so why did they never return?"
The men nodded, curious to hear why no one ever came back.
"From the first, I've wondered the same thing." Richard rubbed a thumb
along the glossy black surface of the statue of himself. "I think that the
boundaries in the Midlands had to have an opening through them because they
were so big--so long. This boundary, here, is nothing compared to those; I
doubt that the same kind of vent would be needed.
"Because it was just one bent section of a boundary and not very long,
I suspect that Kaja-Rang was able to put in a pass that allowed criminals to
be banished through it, but would not allow passage back in. After all, if a
criminal was banished and found he couldn't escape, he would return.
Kaja-Rang wouldn't have wanted that to happen."
"How could such a thing work?" Jennsen asked.
Richard rested his left hand on the hilt of his sword. "Certain snakes
can swallow prey much larger than themselves. Their teeth are angled back so
that as the prey is devoured, it's impossible for it to come back out, to
escape. I suppose that the pass through the boundary could have been somehow
like that--only able to be traversed in one direction."
"Do you think such a thing is possible?" Jennsen asked.
"There is precedent for such safeguards," Kahlan said.
Richard nodded his agreement. "The great barrier between the New and
the Old World had defenses to allow certain people, under specific
conditions, one passage through and back, but not two." He pointed the
warning beacon up at the statue. "A wizard of Kaja-Rang's ability would
surely have known how to craft a pass through the boundary that did not
allow any return. After all, he called it up out of the underworld itself
and it remained viable for nearly three thousand years."
"So then anyone who went out of this boundary died," Owen said.
Richard nodded. "I'm afraid so. Kaja-Rang appeared to have made
elaborate plans that functioned as he intended for all this time. He even
made contingencies should the boundary fail."
"That's something I don't understand," a young man said. "If this
wizard was so great, and his magic was so powerful that he could make a wall
of death to keep us separated from the world for three thousand years, then
how could it possibly fail? In the last two years it simply went away. Why?"
"I believe it was because of me," Kahlan said.
She took a step closer to the men. Richard didn't try to stop her. At
this point, it wouldn't do to appear as if he were withholding information
from them.
"A couple of years ago, in a desperate act to save Richard's life, I
inadvertently called forth underworld power that I believe may be slowly
destroying magic in our world. Richard banished this evil magic, but it had
been here in the world of life for a time, so the effects may be
irreversible."
Worried looks passed among the men. This woman before them had just
admitted that because of something she'd done, their protection had failed.
Because of her, horrifying violence and brutality had befallen them. Because
of her, their way of life had ended.
You still have not shown us your magic," one of the men finally said.
Richard's hand slipped away from the small of Kahlan's back as he
stepped toward the men.
"Kaja-Rang devised a facet to his magic, linked to the boundary he
placed here, to help protect it." Richard held up the small figure of
himself for all the men to see. "This was sent to warn me that the boundary
to your land had failed."
"Why is the top part of it that strange black?" asked a man standing in
the front.
"I believe that it's an indication of how I'm running out of time, how
I may be dying."
Worried whispering swept through the group of men. Richard held up a
hand, urging them to listen to him as he went on.
"This sand inside--can you all see this sand?"
Stretching their necks, they all tried to get a look, but not all were
close enough, so Richard walked among them, holding up the statue so that
they could all see that it looked like him, and see the sand falling inside.
"This is not really sand," he told them. "It's magic."
Owen's face twisted with skepticism. "But you said we couldn't see
magic."
"You are all pristinely ungifted and aren't touched by magic, so you
can't see regular magic. The boundary, however, still prevented you from
going out into the world, didn't it? Why do you suppose that was so?"
"It was a wall of death," an older man spoke up, seeming to think that
it was self-evident.
"But how could it harm people who are not affected by magic? Going into
the boundary itself meant death for you the same as anyone else. Why?
"Because the boundary is a place in this world where the underworld
also existed. The underworld is the world of the dead. You may be ungifted,
but you are mortal; since you are linked to life, so, too, are you linked to
death."
Richard again held the statue up. "This magic, as well, is tied to the
underworld. Since you are all mortal, you have a connection to the
underworld, to the Keeper's power, to death. That's why you can see the sand
that shows how my time trickles away."
"I don't see anything magical about sand trickling down," a man
grumbled. "Just because you say it's magic, or that it's your life trickling
away, that doesn't seem to prove anything."
Richard turned the statue sideways. The sand continued to flow, but
sideways.
Gasps and astonished whispering broke out among the men as they watched
the sand flowing laterally.
They crowded in close like curious children to see the statue as
Richard held it up, on its side, so they could see magic. Some reached out
and tentatively touched the inky black surface as Richard held the figure of
himself out for them to inspect. Others leaned close, peering in to see the
sand flowing askew in the lower part, where the figure was still
transparent.
The men spoke of what a wonder it was, but they weren't sure about his
explanation of underworld magic.
"But we all see this," one of the men said. "This doesn't show us that
we're really different from you or anyone else, as you say we are. This
shows us only that we are all able to see this magic, the same as you. Maybe
we aren't this pristinely ungifted people you seem to think we are."
Richard thought about it a moment, thought about what he could do to
show them the true aspects of magic. Even though he was gifted, he didn't
know a great deal about controlling his own gift, except that it was in part
powered by anger linked to need. He couldn't simply demonstrate some bit of
magic the way Zedd could, and besides, even if he could do something
magical, they wouldn't be able to see it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Richard saw Cara standing with her arms
folded. An idea came to him.
"The bond between the Lord Rahl and his people is a bond of magic,"
Richard said. "That same magic powers other things, besides the protection
that the bond affords against the dream walker."
Richard gestured for Cara to come forward. "In addition to being my
friend, Cara is also a Mord-Sith. For thousands of years Mord-Sith have been
fierce protectors of the Lord Rahl." Richard lifted Cara's arm for the men
to see the red rod hanging from the fine gold chain at her wrist. "This is
an Agiel, the weapon of a Mord-Sith. The Agiel is powered by a Mord-Sith's
connection to the Lord Rahl--to me."
"But it has no blade on it," a man said as he looked closely at the
Agiel swinging on the end of the gold chain. "It has nothing of any use as a
weapon."
"Take a closer look at it," Richard suggested as he held Cara's elbow
and guided her forward, among the men. "Look at it closely to satisfy
yourself that what this man has observed, that it has no blade, that it is
nothing more than this slender rod, is true."
The men leaned in close as Cara walked among them, holding her arm up,
letting the men touch and inspect her Agiel as it dangled from its chain.
When they had all had a look, inspecting the length of it, looking at the
end, hefting it to see that it wasn't heavy and couldn't really be used as a
club, Richard told Cara to touch it to the men. The Agiel spun up into her
fist. Men flinched back at the grim look on her face as she came at them
with the thing that Richard had told them was a weapon.
Cara touched her Agiel to Owen's shoulder.
"She touched me with this red rod before," he assured his men. "It does
nothing."
Cara pressed the Agiel to every man close enough for her to reach. A
few cringed back, fearful of being harmed, even though it had harmed none of
their fellows. Many of the men, though, felt the touch of her Agiel and were
satisfied that there was no ill effect.
Richard rolled up his sleeve. "Now, I will show you that this really is
a powerful weapon of magic."
He held his arm out to Cara. "Draw blood," he said in a calm voice that
did not betray what he really thought of being touched by an Agiel.
Cara stared at him. "Lord Rahl, I don't--"
"Do it," Richard commanded as he held his arm out.
"Here," Tom said, thrusting his bared arm in front of her. "Do it to
me, instead."
Cara immediately saw this as a preferable test.
"No!" Jennsen objected, but too late.
Tom cried out as Cara touched the end of her Agiel to his arm. He
staggered back a step, a trickle of blood running down his arm. The men
stared, unsure what they were seeing.
"It must be a trick of some kind," one suggested.
As Jennsen comforted Tom, Richard held his arm out again.
"Show them," he told Cara. "Show them what a Mord-Sith's Agiel can do
with magic alone."
Cara looked into his eyes. "Lord Rahl..."
"Do it. Show them, so they understand." He turned to the men. "Gather
around closer so you can see that it does its terrible task with no visible
means. Watch closely so that you can all see that it's magic alone doing its
grisly work."
Richard clenched his fist as he held the inside of his arm up for her
to touch. "Do it so that they can clearly see what it will do; otherwise it
will be for nothing. Don't make me do this for nothing."
Cara pressed her lips tight with the displeasure of his command. She
looked once more at the resolve in his eyes. When she did, he could see in
her blue eyes the pain it gave her to hold the Agiel. He clenched his teeth
and nodded that he was ready. With an iron visage, she laid the Agiel
against the inside of his forearm.
It felt like lightning hit him.
The touch of the Agiel was out of all proportion to what it would
appear it should feel like. The thunderous jolt of pain shot up his arm. The
shock of it slammed into his shoulder. It felt like the bones in his entire
arm shattered. Teeth gritted, he held his trembling arm out as Cara slowly
dragged the Agiel down toward his wrist. Blood-filled blisters rose in its
wake. Blood gushed down his arm.
Richard held his breath, kept his abdominal muscles tight, as he went
to one knee, not because he intended to, but because he couldn't remain
standing under the weight of pain as he held his arm up for Cara as she
pressed the Agiel to it. The men gasped as they watched, shocked at the
blood, the obvious pain. They whispered their astonishment.
Cara withdrew the weapon. Richard released the rigid tension in his
muscles, bending forward as he panted, trying to catch his breath, trying to
remain upright. Blood dripped off his fingers.
Kahlan was there beside him with a small scarf Jennsen pulled from a
pocket. "Are you out of your mind?" she hissed heatedly as she wrapped his
bleeding arm.
"Thanks," he said in response to her care, not wanting to address her
question.
He couldn't make his fingers stop trembling. Cara had held little back.
He was sure that she hadn't broken any bones, but it felt as if she had. He
could feel tears of pain running down his face.
When Kahlan finished, Cara put a hand under his arm and helped him to
his feet. "The Mother Confessor is right," she growled under her breath.
"You are out of your mind."
Richard didn't argue the need of what he'd had her do, but instead
turned to the men. He held his arm out. A wet crimson stain slowly grew
along the length of the scarf bandage.
"There is powerful magic for you. You can't see the magic, but you can
see the results. That magic can kill, should Cara wish it." The men cast
worried glances her way, viewing her with newfound respect. "But it could
not harm you men because you have no ability to interact with such magic.
Only those born with the spark of the gift can feel the touch of an Agiel."
The mood had changed. The sight of blood had sobered everyone.
Richard paced slowly before the men. "I've given you the truth in all
that I've told you. I've kept nothing important or relevant from you, nor
will I. I've told you who I am, who you are, and how we've come to this
point. If there is anything you wish to know, I will give you my truthful
answer."
When Richard paused, the men looked around at one another, seeing if
anyone would ask a question. No one did.
"The time has come," Richard said, "for you men to decide your future
and the future of your loved ones. Today is the day upon which that future
hinges."
Richard gestured toward Owen. "I know that Owen had a woman he loved,
Marilee, who was taken away by the Order. I know that each of you has
suffered great loss at the hands of the men of the Imperial Order. I don't
know all your names, yet, or the names of the loved ones taken from you, but
please believe me when I tell you that I know such pain.
"While I understand how you came to the point where you thought you had
no options but to poison me, it wasn't right for you to have done so." Many
men looked away from Richard's gaze, casting their own downward. "I'm going
to give you a chance to set the proper course for yourselves and your loved
ones."
He let them consider this a moment before going on. "You men have
passed many tests to make it this far, to have survived this long in such a
brutal situation as you have all faced, but now you must make a choice."
Richard rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. "I want to know where
you've hidden the antidote to the poison you've given me."
Worried looks spread through the crowd. Men glanced to the side, trying
to judge the feelings of their fellows, trying to see what they would do.
Owen, too, tried to gauge the reaction of his friends, but being just
as uncertain as he, they offered no firm indication of what they wanted to
do. Finally he licked his lips and timidly asked a question.
"If we say that we will tell you where the antidote is, will you agree
to first give us your word that you will help us?"
Richard resumed his measured pacing. The men nervously waited for his
answer as they watched blood drip off his fingers, leaving a trail of
crimson drops on the stone.
"No," Richard said. "I will not allow you to link two separate issues.
It was wrong to poison me. This is your chance to reverse that wrong.
Linking it to any concession perpetuates the fallacy that it can somehow be
justified. Telling me where you've hidden the antidote is the only proper
thing for you to do, now, and must be without condition. This is the day you
must decide how you will live your future. Until you give me your decision,
I will tell you nothing more."
Some of the men looked on the verge of panic, some on the verge of
tears. Owen prodded them all back, away from Richard, so that they could
discuss it among themselves.
"No," Richard said, his pacing coming to a halt. The men all fell
silent and turned back toward him. "I don't want any of you coming to a
decision because of what another says. I want each of you to give me your
own personal decision."
The men stared. A number spoke up all at once, wanting to know what he
meant.
"I want to know, without any preconditions, what each individual
chooses to do--to free me of the poison, or to use it as a threat on my life
to gain my cooperation. I want to know each man's choice."
"But we must reach a consensus," one man said.
"For what purpose?" Richard asked.
"In order for our decision to be correct," he explained. "No proper
decision about the right course of action in any important situation can be
made without a consensus."
"You are attempting to give moral authority to mob rule," Richard said.
"But a consensus points to the proper moral judgment," another man
insisted, "because it is the will of the people."
"I see," Richard said. "So what you're saying is that if all of you men
decide to rape my sister, here, then it's a moral act because you have a
consensus to rape her, and if I oppose you, I'm immoral for standing alone
and failing to have a consensus behind me. That about the way you men see
it?"
The men shrank back in confused revulsion. One spoke up.
"Well... no, not exactly--"
"Right and wrong are not the product of consensus," Richard said,
cutting him off. "You are trying to make a virtue of mob rule. Rational
moral choices are based on the value of life, not a consensus. A consensus
can't make the sun rise at midnight, nor can it change a wrong into a right,
or the other way around. If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand
other men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no
amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.
"I'll not hear any more of this empty gibberish about a consensus. You
are not a flock of geese; you are men. I will know the mind of each of you."
He gestured to the ground at their feet. "Everyone, pick up two pebbles."
Richard watched as the bewildered men hesitantly bent and did his
bidding.
"Now," Richard said, "you will put either one or both pebbles in a
closed fist. Each of you will come up to me, to the man you poisoned, and
you will open your fist so that I can see your decision but the others
can't.
"One pebble will mean no, you will not tell me where the antidote is
located unless I first pledge to try to free your people. Two pebbles in
your one fist will mean yes, you agree to tell me, without any precondition,
where to find the antidote to the poison you've given me."
"But what will happen if we agree to tell you?" one of the men asked.
"Will you still give us our freedom?"
Richard shrugged. "After each of you has given me your answer, you will
all find out mine. If you tell me the location of the antidote, I may help
you, or once I'm free of your poison, I may leave you and return to taking
care of my own urgent problems. You will only find out after you've given me
your answer.
"Now, turn away from your friends and put either one pebble in your
fist for no or two pebbles to agree to reveal the location of the poison.
When you've finished, come forward one at a time and open your hand to show
me your own individual decision."
The men milled around, casting sidelong glances at one another, but as
he'd instructed, they refrained from discussing the matter. Each man finally
set about privately slipping pebbles into his fist.
As the men were occupied, Cara and Kahlan moved in close around
Richard. It looked like the two of them had been reaching conclusions of
their own.
Cara seized his arm. "Are you crazy?" she whispered in an angry tone.
"You've both already asked me that today."
"Lord Rahl, need I remind you that you once before called for a vote
and it only got you into trouble? You said you would not do such a foolish
thing again."
"Cara is right," Kahlan argued in a low voice so the men couldn't hear.
"This time is different."
"It's not different," Cara snapped. "It's trouble."
"It's different," he insisted. "I've told them what's right and why;
now they must decide if they will choose to do the right thing or not."
"You're allowing others to decide your future," Kahlan said. "You're
placing your fate in their hands."
Richard let out a deep breath as he gazed into Kahlan's green eyes and
then the icy blue eyes of the Mord-Sith. "I have to do this. Now, let them
come up and show me their decision."
Cara stormed off to stand back by the statue of Kaja-Rang. Kahlan gave
his arm a squeeze, offering her silent support, accepting his decision even
if she didn't understand his reasons. A brief smile of appreciation was all
he could manage before she turned and walked back to stand by Cara, Jennsen,
and Tom.
Richard turned away, not wanting to let Kahlan see how much pain he was
in. The ache from the poison was slowly creeping back up his chest. Every
breath hurt. His arm still trembled with the lingering ache of being touched
by an Agiel. The worst, though, was the headache. He wondered if Cara could
see it in his eyes. After all, the business of Mord-Sith was pain.
He knew he couldn't wait until after helping these men fight off the
Order before getting the antidote to the poison. He had no idea how to rid
their empire of the Imperial Order. He couldn't even rid his own empire of
the invaders.
Worse, though, he could feel that he was running out of time. His gift
was giving him the headaches and, if not attended to, would eventually kill
him, but worse, it was weakening him, allowing the poison to work faster.
With each passing day he was having more and more difficulty working past
the poison.
If he could get these men to agree to do this, to tell him where they'd
hidden the antidote, then he might be able to recover it in time.
If not, then his chance to live was as good as over.
The men milled around the top of the pass, some staring off into their
own thoughts, some gazing up at the statue of Kaja-Rang, the man who had
banished their people. Some of the men snatched glimpses at their
companions. Richard could see that they were aching to ask friends what they
would do, but they kept to Richard's orders and didn't speak.
Finally, when Richard stepped up before them, one of the younger men
came forward. He had been one of the men eager to hear Richard's words. He'd
looked as if he had listened carefully and considered the things Richard had
told them. Richard knew that if this man said no, then there was no chance
that any of the others would agree.
When the young, blond-headed man opened his fist, two pebbles lay in
his palm. Richard let out an inner sigh that at least one of the men had
actually chosen to do the right thing.
Another man came forward and opened his fist, showing two pebbles
sitting in his palm. Richard nodded in acknowledgment, without showing any
reaction, and let him move aside. The rest of the men had lined up. Each
stepped forward in turn and silently opened his hand. Each showed him two
pebbles, showing that he would recant their death threat, and then moved off
so that the next man could show his choice.
Owen was the last in line. He looked up at Richard, pressed his lips
tight, and then thrust out his hand. "You have done us no harm," he said as
he opened his fist. There in his palm lay two pebbles.
"I don't know what will happen to us, now," Owen said, "but I can see
that we must not cause you harm because we are desperate for your help."
Richard nodded. "Thank you." The sincerity in his voice brought smiles
to many of the faces watching. "You have all showed two pebbles. I'm
encouraged that you've all chosen to do the right thing. We now have common
ground upon which to find a future course."
The men looked around one another in surprise. They each cheerfully
gathered in close to their friends, talking excitedly to one another about
how they had all made the same decision. They looked gleeful that they were
united in their decision. Richard moved back to where Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen,
and Tom stood.
"Satisfied?" he asked Kahlan and Cara.
Cara folded her arms. "What would you have done had they all chosen to
keep the antidote's location a secret until after you helped them?"
Richard shrugged. "I'd be no better off than I was, but no worse off,
either. I'd have to help them, but at least I would know that I dare not
trust any of them."
Kahlan still didn't look pleased. "And what if most of them would have
said yes, but some stuck to their ways and said no?"
Richard looked into her resolute green eyes. "Then, after the ones who
agreed had told me where to find the antidote, I would have had to kill
those who said no."
Understanding the seriousness of his explanation, Kahlan nodded. Cara
smiled her satisfaction. Jennsen looked shocked.
"If any would have said no," he explained to Jennsen, "then they would
have been choosing to continue to enslave me, to hold a sentence of death
over my head in order to manipulate my life to get what they wanted from me.
I would never be able to trust them in what I must ask the rest of them to
do. I couldn't trust our lives to such treachery. But, now, that's one less
problem we have to worry about."
Richard turned to the waiting men. "Each of you has decided to return
my life to me."
The faces watching him turned serious as they waited to hear what he
would do now. Richard gazed down at the small figure of himself, at the sand
trickling down, at the eerie black surface that had already descended over
the top of the statue, like the underworld itself slowly claiming his life.
His fingers left smears of blood across the surface of the figure.
The clouds had lowered in around them, thickening so that the afternoon
light seemed more like the gloom of dusk.
Richard lowered the statue and looked back up at the men. "We will do
our best to see if we can help you get rid of the Order."
A cheer rose into the thin, cold air. The men hooted their excitement
as well as their relief. He hadn't yet seen any of them smile quite this
broadly before. Those smiles, more than anything, revealed the depth of
their wish to be free of the men of the Order. Richard wondered how they
would feel about it when he finally told them their part.
He knew that as long as Nicholas the Slide was able to seek them out
through the eyes of the races, he would remain a threat that would haunt
them wherever they went and endangered all of their work to get the Old
World to rise up and overthrow the Imperial Order. More than that, though,
Nicholas would be able to direct killers to find them. The thought of
Nicholas seeing Kahlan and knowing where to find her gave Richard chills. He
had to eliminate Nicholas. It was possible that in doing so, in eliminating
their leader, he would also help these people drive the Order from their
homes.
Richard gestured for the men to gather in closer. "First, before we get
to the matter of freeing your people, you need to show me where you've
hidden the poison."
Owen squatted down and selected a stone from nearby. With it, he
scratched a chalky oval on the face of a flat spot in the rock. "Say that
this line is the mountains surrounding Bandakar." He set the stone at the
end of the oval closest to Richard. "Then this is the pass into our land,
where we are now."
He plucked three pebbles from the ground. "This is our town,
With-erton, where we lived," he said as he set the first pebble down not far
from the rock that represented the pass. "There is antidote there."
"And this is where all of you men were hiding?" Richard asked as he
circled a finger over the first pebble. "In the hills surrounding
With-erton?"
"Mostly to the south," Owen said, pointing to the area. He placed the
second pebble near the middle of the oval. "Here there is another vial of
antidote, in this city, here, called Hawton." He placed the third pebble
near the edge of the oval. "Here is the third vial, in this city,
Northwick."
"So then," Richard summed up, "I just need to go to one of those three
places and recover the antidote. Since your town is the smallest, that would
probably be our best chance."
Some of the men shook their heads; others looked away.
Owen, looking troubled, touched each of the three pebbles. "I'm sorry,
Lord Rahl, but one of these is not enough. Too much time has passed. Even
two will be insufficient by now. The man who made the poison said that if
too much time passed, all four would be necessary to insure a remedy.
"He said that if you did not immediately take the first antidote I
brought, then it would only halt the poison for a while. He said that then
the other three vials would all be needed. He said that in this case, the
poison would possibly go through three states. If you are to be free of the
poison, you must drink all of the three remaining antidotes. If you don't,
you will die."
"Three states? What does that mean?"
"The first state will be pain in your chest. The second state will be
dizziness that makes standing difficult." Owen looked away from Richard's
gaze. "In the third state the poison makes you blind." He looked up and
touched a hand to Richard's arm, as if to dispel his worry. "But taking
three vials of the antidote will cure you, make you well."
Richard wiped a weary hand across his brow. The pain in his chest told
him that he was in the poison's first state.
"How much time do I have?"
Owen looked down as he straightened his sleeve. "I'm not sure, Lord
Rahl. We have already taken a lot of time traveling this far since you had
that first vial. I think we have no time to lose."
"How much time?" Richard asked in as calm a voice as he could manage.
Owen swallowed. "To be truthful, Lord Rahl, I'm surprised that you are
able to stand the pain from the first state of the poison. From what I was
told, the pain would grow as time passed."
Richard simply nodded. He didn't look up at Kahlan.
With soldiers of the Imperial Order occupying Bandakar, getting in to
recover the antidote from one place sounded difficult enough, but retrieving
it from all three places sounded beyond difficult.
"Well, since time is short, I have a better idea," Richard said. "Make
me more of the antidote. Then we won't have to worry about getting what
you've hidden and we can simply worry about how best to take on the men of
the Order."
Owen shrugged one shoulder. "We can't."
"Why not?" Richard leaned in. "You made it before--you made the
antidote that you hid. Make it again."
Owen shrank back. "We can't."
Richard took a patient breath. "Why not?"
Owen pointed off at the small bag he'd brought, now lying to the
side--the bag containing the fingers of three girls. "The father of those
girls was the man who made the poison and made the antidote. He is the only
one among us who knew how to make such complex things with herbs. We don't
know how--we don't even know many of the ingredients he used.
"There may be others in the cities who could make an antidote, but we
don't know who they are, or if they are still alive. With men of the Order
in those places we wouldn't even be able to find these people. Even if we
could, we don't know what was used to make up the poison, so they would not
know how to make an antidote. The only chance you have to live is to recover
the three vials of antidote."
Richard's head was hurting so much that he didn't know if he could
stand much longer. With only three vials in existence, and all three needed
if he was to live, he had to get to them before anything happened to any one
of them. Someone could find one and throw it out. They could be moved. They
could be broken, the antidote draining away into the ground. With every
breath, he felt stitches of pain pull inside his chest. Panic gnawed at the
edges of his thoughts.
When Kahlan rested her hand on his shoulder, Richard laid a grateful
hand over hers.
"We will help you get the antidote, Lord Rahl," one of the men said.
Another nodded. "That's right. We will help you get it."
The men all spoke up, then, saying that they would all help to get the
antidote so that Richard could rid himself of the poison.
"Most of us have been to at least two of these places," Owen said.
"Some of us have been to all three. I hid the antidote, but I told the
others the places, so we all know where it is. We know where we have to get
in to recover it. We will tell you, too."
"Then that's what we'll do." Richard squatted down as he studied the
stone map. "Where is Nicholas?"
Owen leaned in and tapped the pebble in the center. "Here, in Haw-ton,
is this man Nicholas."
Richard looked up at Owen. "Don't tell me. You hid the antidote in the
building where you saw Nicholas."
Owen shrugged self-consciously. "At the time, it seemed like a good
idea. Now, I wish I had thought better of it."
Standing behind Richard, Cara rolled her eyes in disgust. "I'm
surprised you didn't hand it to Nicholas and ask him to hold on to it for
you."
Appearing eager to change the subject, Owen pointed at the pebble
representing Northwick. "In this city is where the Wise One is hiding. Maybe
we can get help from the great speakers. Maybe the Wise One will give us his
blessing and then people will help us in our effort to rid our land of the
Imperial Order."
After all he'd learned about the people who lived beyond the boundary
in Bandakar, Richard didn't think he could count on any meaningful help from
them; they wanted to be free of marauding brutes, but condemned their only
real means to be free. These men had at least proven a degree of resolve.
These men would have to work to change other people's attitudes, but Richard
had his doubts that they would garner much immediate help.
In order to accomplish what you men rightfully want--to eradicate the
Order, or at least make them leave your homes--you are going to have to
help. Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and I aren't going to be able to do it
alone. If it's to work, you men must help us."
"What is it you wish us to do?" Owen asked. "We already said we will
take you to these places where the antidote is hidden. What more can we do?"
"You are going to have to help us kill the men of the Order."
Instantly, heated protests erupted. All of the men talked at once,
shaking his head, warding the notion with his hands. Although Richard
couldn't make out all their words, their feelings about what he said were
obvious enough. What words he did hear were all objections that they
couldn't kill.
Richard rose up. "You know what these men have done," he said in a
powerful voice that brought them to silence. "You ran away so you wouldn't
also be killed. You know how your people are being treated. You know what's
being done to your loved ones in captivity."
"But we can't harm another," Owen whined. "We can't."
"It's not our way," another man added.
"You banished criminals through the boundary," Richard said. "How did
you make them go through if they refused?"
"If we had to," one of the older men said, "a number of us would hold
him, so that he could harm no one. We would tie his hands and bear him to
the boundary. We would tell such a banished man that he must go out of our
land. If he still refused, we would carry him to a long steep place in the
rock where we would lay him down and push him feet first so that he would
slide down the rock and go beyond. Once we did this, they weren't able to
return."
Richard wondered at the lengths these people went to not to harm the
worst animals among them. He wondered how many had to suffer or die at the
hands of such criminals before the people of Bandakar were sufficiently
motivated to take what were to them extreme measures.
"We understand much of what you have told us," Owen said, "but we
cannot do what you ask. We would be doing wrong. We have been raised not to
harm another."
Richard snatched up the bag with the girls' fingers and shook it at the
men. "Every one of your loved ones back there is thinking of nothing but
being saved. Can any of you even imagine their terror? I know what it's like
to be tortured, to feel helpless and alone, to feel like you will never
escape. In such a situation you want nothing more than for it to stop. You
would do anything for it to stop."
"That's why we needed you," an older man said. "You must do this. You
must rid us of the Order."
"I told you, I can't do it alone." With an arm wrapped in a bloody
bandage, Richard gestured emphatically. "Surrendering your will to men of
the Order who would do such things as this solves nothing. It simply adds
more victims. The men of the Order are evil; you must fight back."
"But if only you would talk to those men like you talked to us, they
would see their misguided ways. They would change, then."
"No, they won't. Life doesn't matter to them. They've made their choice
to torture, rape, and kill. Our only chance to survive, our only chance to
have a future is to destroy them."
"We can't harm another person," one of the men said.
"It's wrong to harm another," Owen agreed.
"It's always immoral to hurt, much less kill, another person," a
middle-aged man said to the mumbled agreement of his fellows. "Those who do
wrong are obviously in pain and need our understanding, not our hate. Hate
will only invite hate. Violence will only begin a cycle of violence that
never solves anything."
Richard felt as if the ground he had gained with these men was slipping
away from him. He was about to run his fingers back through his hair when he
saw that they were covered in blood. He dropped his arm and shifted his
approach.
"You poisoned me to get me to kill these men. By that act, you've
already proven that you accept the reality that it's sometimes necessary to
kill in order to save innocent lives--that's why you wanted me. You can't
hold a belief that it's wrong to harm another and at the same time coerce me
to do it for you. That's simply killing by proxy."
"We need our freedom," one of them said. "We thought that maybe because
of your command as a ruler you could convince these men, for fear of you, to
leave us be."
"That's why you have to help me. You just said it--for fear of me.You
must help me in this so that the threat, the fear, is credible. If they
don't believe the threat is real then why would they leave your land?"
One of the others folded his arms. "We thought you might rid us of the
Order without violence, without killing, but it is up to you to do such
killing if that is your way. We cannot kill. From our very beginning, our
ancestors have taught us that killing is wrong. You must do this."
Another, nodding his agreement, said, "It's your duty to help those who
cannot bring themselves to do what you can do."
Duty. The polite name put to the chains of servitude.
Richard turned away, closing his eyes as he squeezed his temples
between fingers and thumb. He'd thought that he was beginning to get through
to these men. He'd thought he would be able to get them to think for
themselves--in their own best interest--rather than to function
spontaneously according to the rote dictates of their indoctrination.
He could hardly believe that after all he'd told them, these men would
still rather have their loved ones endure torture and brutal murder than
harm the men committing the crimes. By refusing to face the nature of
reality, these men were willingly giving the good over to evil, life over to
death.
He realized then that it was even more basic than that. In the most
fundamental sense, they were willfully choosing to reject the reality of
evil.
Deep inside him, every breath pulled a stitch of pain. He had to get
the antidote. He was running out of time.
But that alone would not solve his problems; his gift was killing him
just as surely as the poison. He felt so sick from the pounding pain of his
headache that he thought he might throw up. Even the magic of his sword was
failing him.
Richard feared the poison, but in a more central way, he feared the
encroaching death from within, from his gift. The poison, as dangerous as it
was, had a clearly defined cause and cure. With his gift, he felt lost.
Richard looked back into Kahlan's troubled eyes. He could see that she
had no solution to offer. She stood in a weary pose, her arm hanging
straight with the weight of the warning beacon that seemed to tell him only
that he was dying, but offered no answers. Its whole reason for being was to
call him to a proclaimed duty to help replace the boundary, as if his life
was not his own, but belonged to anyone who laid claim to it by shackling
him with a declaration of duty.
That concept--duty--was no less a poison than that which these men had
given him ... a call to sacrifice himself.
Richard took the small statue from Kahlan's hand and stared down at it.
The inky black had already enveloped half the length of the figure. His life
was being consumed. The sand continued to trickle away. His time was running
out.
The stone figure of Kaja-Rang, the long-dead wizard who had summoned
him with the warning beacon and charged him with an impossible task, loomed
over him as if in silent rebuke.
Behind him, the men huddled close, affirming to one another their
beliefs, their ways, their responsibility to their ancient ideals, that the
men of the Order were acting as they were because they were misguided and
could still be reformed. They spoke of the Wise One and all the great
speakers who had committed them to the path of peace and nonviolence. They
all reaffirmed the belief that they must follow the path that had been laid
down for them from the very beginning by their land's founders, their
ancestors, who had given them their customs, their beliefs, their values,
their way of living.
Trying to elevate these men to understand what was right and necessary
seemed as difficult as trying to lift them by a slender thread. That thread
had broken.
Richard felt trapped by the deluded convictions of these people, by
their poison, by the headaches, by Nicholas hunting them, and by a long-dead
wizard who had reached out from the underworld to try to enslave him to a
long-dead duty.
Anger welling up inside him, Richard cocked his arm and heaved the
warning beacon at the statue of Kaja-Rang.
The men ducked as the small figure shot by just over their heads to
shatter against the stone base of the statue. Amber fragments and inky black
shards flew in every direction. The sand from inside splattered in a stain
across the front of the granite pedestal.
The cowering men fell silent. Overhead, wisps trailing from the sullen
clouds drifted by, almost close enough to reach up and touch. A few icy
flakes of snow floated along in the still air. All around, a frigid fog had
moved in to envelop the surrounding mountains, leaving the top of the pass
with the stone sentinel seeming isolated and otherworldly, as if this were
all there was to existence. Richard stood in the dead quiet at the center of
everyone's attention.
The words written in High D'Haran on the statue's base echoed through
Richard's mind.
Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond... for beyond is
evil: those who cannot see.
The High D'Haran words streamed again and again through his mind. The
translation of those words just didn't feel right.
"Dear spirits," Richard whispered in sudden realization. "I had it
wrong. That's not what it says."
Khalan felt as if her heart were being crushed by the ordeal these men
were putting Richard through. Just when she'd thought he had gotten them to
understand the truth of what was needed, it seemed to have slipped away as
the men reverted to their willful blindness.
Richard, though, seemed almost to have forgotten the men. He stood
staring at where the warning beacon had shattered against the statue. Kahlan
stepped closer to him and whispered.
"What do you mean, you had it wrong, and that's not what it says? What
are you talking about?"
"The translation," he said in what sounded like startled comprehension.
He stood motionless, facing the towering statue of Kaja-Rang. "Remember how
I told you that it was an odd way to phrase what it said?"
Kahlan glanced to the statue and then back to Richard. "Yes."
"It wasn't odd at all; I just had it wrong. I was trying to make it say
what I thought it would say--that those beyond couldn't see magic-- instead
of just seeing what was before me. What I told you before isn't what it
says...."
When his voice trailed off, Kahlan reached up and gripped his arm to
draw his attention. "What do you mean, that's not what it says?"
Richard gestured toward the statue. "I see what I did wrong with the
phrasal sequence, why I was having trouble with it. I told you I wasn't sure
of the translation. I was right to have doubts. It doesn't say, 'Fear any
breach of this seal to the empire beyond... for beyond is evil: those who
cannot see.' "
Jennsen leaned in close beside Kahlan. "Are you sure?"
Richard looked back at the statue, his voice distant. "I am now."
Kahlan pulled on his arm, making him look at her. "So what does it
say?"
His gray eyes met her gaze briefly before turning to the eyes of the
statue of Kaja-Rang staring out at the Pillars of Creation, at his final
safeguard protecting the world from these people. Instead of answering her,
he started away.
The men parted as Richard strode toward the statue. Kahlan stayed close
on his heels, Cara following in her wake. Jennsen gathered up Betty's rope
and pulled her along. The men, already backing out of the way for Richard,
kept a wary eye on the goat and her mistress as they passed. Tom stayed
where he was, keeping a careful but unobtrusive watch over all the men.
At the statue, Richard swiped the dusting of snow off the ledge,
revealing again the words carved in High D'Haran. Kahlan watched his eyes
moving along the line of words, reading them to himself. He had a kind of
excitement in his movements that told her he was racing after an important
quarry.
For the moment, she could also see that his headache was gone. She
couldn't understand the way it ebbed from time to time, but she was relieved
to see strength in the way he moved. Hands spread on the stone, leaning on
his arms, he looked up from the words. Without the headache, there was a
vibrant clarity in his gray eyes.
"Part of this story has been puzzling," he said. "I understand now. It
doesn't say, 'Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond... for
beyond is evil: those who cannot see.' "
Jennsen's nose wrinkled. "It doesn't? You mean it wasn't meant to be
about these pristinely ungifted people?"
"Oh, it was about them, all right, but not in that respect." Richard
tapped a finger to the carved words. "It doesn't say 'for beyond is evil:
those who cannot see,' but something profoundly different. It says, 'Fear
any breach of this seal to the empire beyond . . . for beyond are those who
cannot see evil.' "
Kahlan's brow drew down. "... those who cannot see evil."
Richard lifted his bandaged arm up toward the figure towering over
them. "That's what Kaja-Rang feared most--not those who couldn't see magic,
but those who could not see evil. That's his warning to the world." He aimed
a thumb back over his shoulder, indicating the men behind them. "That's what
this is all about."
Kahlan was taken aback, and a little perplexed. "Do you think it might
be that because these people can't see magic they also can't recognize
evil," she asked, "or that because of the way they're different they simply
don't have the ability to conceive of evil, in much the same way they can't
conceive of objective magic as having nothing to do with mysticism?"
"That might in part be what Kaja-Rang thought," Richard said. "But I
don't."
"Are you so sure?" Jennsen asked.
"Yes."
Before Kahlan could make him explain, Richard turned to the men. "Here,
in stone, Kaja-Rang left a warning for the world. Kaja-Rang's warning is
about those who cannot see evil. Your ancestors were banished from the New
World because they were pristinely ungifted. But this man, this powerful
wizard, Kaja-Rang, feared them for something else: their ideas. He feared
them because they refused to see evil. That's what made your ancestors so
dangerous to the people of the Old World."
"How could that be?" a man asked.
"Thrown together and banished to a strange place, the Old World, your
ancestors must have clung desperately to one another. They were so afraid of
rejection, of banishment, that they avoided rejecting one of their own. It
developed into a strong belief that no matter what, they should try not to
condemn anyone. For this reason, they rejected the concept of evil for fear
they would have to judge someone. Judging someone as evil meant they would
have to face the problem of removing them from their midst.
"In their flight from reality, they justified their practices by
settling on the fanciful notion that nothing is real and so no one can know
the nature of reality. That way, they wouldn't have to admit that someone
was evil. Better to deny the existence of evil than have to eliminate the
evildoer in their midst. Better to turn a blind eye to the problem, ignore
it, and hope it went away.
"If they admitted the reality of evil, then eliminating the evildoer
was the only proper action, so, by extension, since they had been banished,
they thought that they must have been banished because they were evil. Their
solution was to simply discard the entire concept of evil. An entire belief
structure developed around this core.
"Kaja-Rang may have thought that because they were pristinely un-gifted
and couldn't see magic, they also couldn't see evil, but what he feared was
the infection of their beliefs spreading to others. Thinking requires
effort; these people offered beliefs that needed no thought, but merely
adopting some noble-sounding phrases. It was, in fact, an arrogant dismissal
of the power of man's mind--an illusion of wisdom that spurned the
requirement of any authentic effort to understand the world around them or
the nuisance of validation. Such simplistic solutions, such as
unconditionally rejecting all violence, are especially seductive to the
undeveloped minds of the young, many of whom would have eagerly adopted such
disordered reasoning as a talisman of enlightenment.
"When they began fanatically espousing these empty tenets to others, it
probably set off the alarm for Kaja-Rang.
"With the spread of such ideas, with the kind of rabid hold it has over
some people, such as it has over you men, Kaja-Rang and his people saw how,
if such beliefs ran free, it would eventually bring anarchy and ruin by
sanctioning evil to stalk among their people, just as it leaves you men
defenseless against the evil of the Imperial Order now come among you.
"Kaja-Rang saw such beliefs for what they were: embracing death rather
than life. The regression from true enlightenment into the illusion of
insight spawned disorder, becoming a threat to all of the Old World, raising
the specter of a descent into darkness."
Richard tapped his finger on the top of the ledge. "There is other
writing up here, around the base, that suggests as much, and what became the
eventual solution.
"Kaja-Rang had those who believed these teachings collected, not only
all the pristinely ungifted banished from the New World, but also the rabid
believers who had fallen under their delusional philosophy, and banished the
whole lot of them.
"The first banishment, from the New World down to the Old, was unjust.
The second banishment, from the Old World to the land beyond here, had been
earned."
Jennsen, twiddling the frayed end of Betty's rope, looked dubious. "Do
you really think there were others banished along with those who were
pristinely ungifted? That would mean there were a great many people. How
could Kaja-Rang have made all these people go along? Didn't they resist? How
did Kaja-Rang make them all go? Was it a bloody banishment?"
The men were nodding to her questions, apparently wondering the same
thing.
"I don't believe that High D'Haran was a common language among the
people, not down here, anyway. I suspect that it was a dying language only
used among certain learned people, such as wizards." Richard gestured to the
land beyond. "Kaja-Rang named these people Bandakar--the banished. I don't
think the people knew what it meant. Their empire was not called the Pillars
of Creation, or some name referring only to the ungifted. The writing here
suggests that it was because it was not only the pristinely ungifted who
were banished, but all those who believed as they did. They all were
Bandakar: the banished.
"They thought of themselves, of their beliefs, as enlightened.
Kaja-Rang played on that, flattering them, telling them that this place had
been set aside to protect them from a world not ready to accept them. He
made them feel that, in many ways, they were being put here because they
were better than anyone else. Not given to reasoned thinking, these people
were easily beguiled in this fashion and duped into cooperating with their
own banishment. According to what's hinted at in the writing here around the
statue's base, they went happily into their promised land. Once confined to
this place, marriage and subsequent generations spread the pristinely
ungifted trait throughout the entire population of Bandakar."
"And Kaja-Rang really believed they were such a terrible threat to the
rest of the people of the Old World?" Jennsen asked. Again, men nodded,
apparently in satisfaction that she had asked the question. Kah-lan
suspected that Jennsen might have asked the question on behalf of the men.
Richard gestured up at the statue of Kaja-Rang. "Look at him. What's he
doing? He's symbolically standing watch over the boundary he placed here.
He's guarding this pass, watching over a seal keeping back what lies beyond.
In his eternal vigilance his hand holds a sword, ever at the ready, to show
the magnitude of the danger.
"The people of the Old World felt such gratitude to this important man
that they built this monument to honor what he had done for them in
protecting them from beliefs they knew would have imperiled their society.
The threat was no trifling matter.
"Kaja-Rang watches over this boundary even in death. From the world of
the dead he sent me a warning that the seal had been breached."
Richard waited in the tense silence until all the men looked back at
him before he quietly concluded.
"Kaja-Rang banished your ancestors not only because they couldn't see
magic, but, more importantly, because they couldn't see evil."
In restless disquiet, the men glanced about at their companions. "But
what you call evil is just a way of expressing an inner pain," one of them
said, more as a plea than as an argument.
"That's right," another told Richard. "Saying someone is evil is
prejudiced thinking. It's a way of belittling someone already in pain for
some reason. Such people must be embraced and taught to shed their fears of
their fellow man and then they will not strike out in violent ways."
Richard swept his glare across all the watching faces. He pointed up at
the statue.
"Kaja-Rang feared you because you are dangerous to everyone--not
because you are ungifted, but because you embrace evil with your teachings.
In so doing, in trying to be kind, to be unselfish, in trying to be
nonjudgmental, you allow evil to become far more powerful than it otherwise
would. You refuse to see evil, and so you welcome it among you. You allow it
to exist. You give it power over you. You are a people who have welcomed
death and refused to denounce it. "You are an empire naked to the shadow of
evil."
After a moment of thick silence, one of the older men finally spoke up.
"This belief in evil, as you call it, is a very intolerant attitude and is
far too simplistic a judgment. It's nothing less than an unfair condemnation
of your fellow man. None of us, not even you, can judge another."
Kahlan knew that Richard had a great deal of patience, but very little
tolerance. He had been very patient with these men; she could see that he
had reached the end of his tolerance. She half expected him to draw his
sword.
He walked among the men, his raptor glare moving individuals back as he
passed. "Your people think of themselves as enlightened, as above violence.
You are not enlightened; you are merely slaves awaiting a master, victims
awaiting killers. They have finally come for you."
Richard snatched up the small bag and stood before the last man who had
spoken. "Open your hand."
The man glanced to those at his sides. Finally, he held his hand out,
palm up.
Richard reached into the bag and then placed a small finger, its flesh
withered and stained with dried blood, in the man's hand.
The man obviously didn't want the little finger sitting in the palm of
his hand, but after he looked up into Richard's withering glower, he said
nothing and made no attempt to rid himself of the gory trophy.
Richard walked among the men, ordering random men to open their hands.
Kahlan recognized the ones he selected as men who had objected to the things
he was trying to do to help them. He placed a finger in each upturned hand
until the bag was empty.
"What you hold in your hand is the result of evil," Richard said. "You
men all know the truth of it. You all knew evil was loose in your land. You
all wanted that to change. You all wanted to be rid of evil.
You all wanted to live. You all wanted your loved ones to live.
"You all had hoped to do it without having to face the truth.
"I have tried to explain things to you so that you could understand the
true nature of the battle we all face."
Richard straightened the baldric over his shoulder.
"I am done explaining.
"You wanted me brought to your land. You have accomplished your goal.
Now, you are going to decide if you will follow through with what you know
to be right."
Richard again stood before them, his back straight, his chin held high,
his scabbard gleaming in the gloomy light, his black tunic trimmed in gold
standing out in sharp contrast against the fog-shrouded mountains behind
him. He looked like nothing so much as the Lord Rahl. He was as commanding a
figure as Kahlan had ever seen.
After Richard and Kahlan's beginning so long ago, when they had struck
out from those secluded woods of his, Richard had turned the world upside
down. From the beginning, he had always been at the heart of their struggle,
and was now the ruler of an empire--even if that endangered empire was
largely a mystery to him, as was his gift.
His cause, though, was crystal clear.
Together, Kahlan and Richard were at the center of the storm of a war
that had engulfed their world. It had now engulfed these men and their land.
Many people saw Richard as their only salvation. Richard seemed forever
trying to prove them wrong. For many others, though, he was the single most
hated man alive. For them, Richard sought to give them cause; he told people
that their life was their own. The Imperial Order wanted him dead for that
more than for any blow he had dealt them.
"This is the way things are going to be," Richard finally said in a
voice of quiet authority.
"You will surrender your land and your loyalty to the D'Haran Empire,
or you will be the subjects of the Imperial Order. Those are your only two
choices. There are no others. Like it or not, you must choose. If you refuse
to make a choice, events will decide for you and you will likely end up in
the hands of the Imperial Order. Make no mistake, they are evil hands.
"With the Order, if you are not murdered, you will be slaves and
treated as such. I think you know very well what that entails. Your lives
will have no value to them except as slaves, called upon to help them spread
their evil.
"As part of the D'Haran Empire, your lives will be your own. I will
expect you to rise up and live them as the individuals you are, not as some
speck of dirt in a pit of filth you have dug yourselves into.
"The seal to your hiding place, to the Bandakaran Empire, has failed. I
don't know how to repair it, nor would I if I could. There is no more Empire
of Bandakar.
"There is no way to allow you to be who you were and to protect you.
Maybe the Order can be thrown out of your land, but they cannot be
effortlessly kept out, for it is their ideas that have come to destroy you.
"So choose. Slaves or free men. Life as either will not be easy. I
think you know what life as slaves will be like. As free men you will have
to struggle, work, and think, but you will have the rewards that brings, and
those rewards will be yours and no one else's.
"Freedom must be won, but then it has to be guarded lest those like the
Order come again to enslave those wishing for someone else to do their
thinking.
"I am the Lord Rahl. I intend to go get the antidote to the poison
you've given me. If you men choose to be part of this struggle, to rid
yourselves and your loved ones of evil, then I will help you.
"If you choose not to stand with us, then you may go back and let the
Order do with you what they will, or you can run. If you run, you may
survive for a time, as you have been doing, but, because that is not the way
you wish to live, you will die as frightened animals, never having lived
what life has to offer.
"So choose, but if you choose to stand with me against evil, then you
will have to relinquish your self-imposed blindness and open your eyes to
look around at life. You will have to see the reality of the world around
you. There is good and bad in the world. You will have to use your minds to
judge which is which so that you can seek the good and reject the bad.
"If you choose to stand with me, I will do my best to answer any honest
question and try to teach you how to triumph against the men of the Order
and those like them. But I will not suffer your mindless teachings that are
nothing more than a calculated rejection of life.
"Take a look at the bloody fingers you or your friends hold. Look at
what was done to children by evil men. You should hate such men who would do
this. If you don't, or can't, then you have no business being with those of
us who embrace life.
"I want each of you to think about those children, about their terror,
their pain, their wish not to be hurt. Think of what it was like for them to
be alone and in the hands of evil men. You should rightfully hate the men
who would do such things. Hold tight to that righteous hatred, for that is
the hatred of evil.
"I intend to recover the antidote so that I can live. In the process, I
also intend to kill as many of those evil men as I can. If I go alone, I may
succeed in getting the antidote, but alone I will not succeed in liberating
your homes from the Imperial Order.
"If you choose to go with me, to help me in this struggle, we may have
a chance.
"I don't know what I face there, so I can't honestly tell you that we
have a good chance. I can only tell you that if you don't help me, then
there is likely no chance."
Richard held up a finger. "Make no mistake. If you choose to join us
and we take up this struggle, some of us will probably die. If we do not,
all of us will die, not necessarily in body, but in spirit. Under such rule
as the Order has shown you, no one lives, even though their bodies might for
a time endure the misery of life as slaves. Under the Order, every soul
withers and dies."
The men were silent as Richard paused to meet their gazes. Most could
not look away, while some seemed shamed and so they stared at the ground.
"If you choose to side with me in this struggle," Richard said with
deliberate care, "you will be called upon to kill men of the Order, evil
men. If you once thought that I enjoyed killing, let me assure you that you
are very wrong. I hate it. I do it to defend life. I would never expect you
to relish killing. It is a necessity to do it, not to enjoy doing it. I
expect you to relish life and do what is necessary to preserve it."
Richard picked up one of the items, lying off to the side, that they
had made while waiting for Tom and Owen to bring the men up into the pass.
It looked like little more than a stout stick. It was in fact made of oak
limbs. It was rounded at the back to fit the hand, narrow at a point in the
middle, and pointed at the other end.
"You men don't have weapons. While we waited for you to arrive, we've
made some." He waggled his fingers, requesting Tom to come forward. "The men
of the Order won't recognize these as weapons, at first, anyway. If
questioned, you should tell them that they're used to make holes in the
ground to plant crops."
With his left hand, Richard seized Tom's shirt at his shoulder, to hold
him, and demonstrated the weapon's use by slowly showing how it would be
thrust upward, toward a man's middle just under his ribs, to stab him. Some
faces among the men twisted with revulsion.
"This can most easily be driven up into a man's soft part, up in under
his ribs," Richard told them. "Once you thrust it in, give it a quick
sideways twist to break it off at the narrow point. That way, the man won't
be able to pull it out. With such a thing lodged in his insides, if he can
even stand, he won't want to be running after you or trying to wrestle you.
You'll be better able to get away."
One of the men lifted a hand. "But a piece of wood like that will be
wet and wouldn't break. Many of the wood fibers will just bend over, leaving
the handle end attached."
Richard tossed the weapon to the man. After he caught it, he said,
"Look at the middle, where it's cut to a narrow neck. You'll see that it's
been held over a fire and dried for that very reason. Notice the pointed
end, too. You'll see that it's been cut and split into four sections, with
the points bent open, like a flower bud, so that as it's thrust into an
enemy it has a good chance to break open, the four sides going in different
directions to do more damage. With that one thrust, it will be like stabbing
him four times.
"When you snap it off in him, he won't be able to fight you because
every move he makes will wrench those long oak splinters through his
vulnerable insides. If it doesn't hit something vital and kill him
immediately, he's certainly likely to die within the day. While he's dying,
he'll be screaming in agony and fear. I want such evil men to know that the
pain and death they inflict on others will be coming for them. That fear
will cause them to begin to think of running. It will make them lose sleep,
wear them down, so that when we do get to them they'll be easier to kill."
Richard picked up another item. "This is a small crossbow." He held
it high for the men to see as he pointed outi ts features."As you can
see, the bowstring is locked back on this nut. A stout bolt is laid in this
groove, here. Pulling this lever rotates the nut, releasing the string and
firing the bolt. It isn't fancy, and you men aren't experienced at using
such weapons, but at close, range you don't have to be all that good a shot.
"I've started a number of crossbows and have a whole pile of stocks and
parts made. With the items that you men brought back, we can
finish making them. They're rather 0rude, and, as I said, they won't be
good at much of a distance, but they are small and you can hide them
under a cloak. No matter how big and strong the enemy is, the smallest
of you can kill him. Not even his chain-mail armor will protect against
such a weapon fired at close range. I cah promise you that they will be
very deadly."
Richard showed the men hardwood clubs they would stud with nails. Such
weapons could also be concealed. He showed them a simple cord with a small
wooden handle at each end trjat was used to strangle a man from behind when
stealth was paramount.
"As we take these men, we'll be able to get other weapons--knives,
axes, maces, swords."
"But, Lord Rahl," Owen said, looking beside himself with worry, "even
if we were to agree to join you in this, we are not fighters. These men of
the Order are brutes who are experienced at such things. We would stand no
chance against them."
The others voiced their worried agreement. Richard shook his head as he
held up his hands for them to be quiet.
"Look at those fingers you hold. Ask yourselves what chance those
little girls had against such men. Ask yourselves what chance your mothers,
your sisters, your wives, your daughters have. You are the only hope for
these people. You are the only hope for yourselves.
"Most likely, you men would not stand a chance against such men,
either. But I have no intention of fighting them as you're thinking. That's
a good way to get killed." Richard pointed at one of the younger men. "What
is it we want? The reason you came to get me?"
The man looked confused. "To get rid of the men of the Order?"
"Yes," Richard said. "That's right. You want to be rid of murderers.
The last thing you want is to fight them."
The man gestured at the weapons Richard had shown them. "But these
things ..."
"These men are murderers. Our task is to execute them. We want to avoid
fights. If we fight them, we risk being hurt or killed. I am not saying that
we won't have to fight them, but that isn't our goal. There will be times
when there may be limited numbers of them and we can be sure that with
surprise we can take them out before a fight has a chance to erupt. Keep in
mind that these men have been conditioned to none of your people putting up
any resistance. We hope to kill them before it occurs to them to draw a
weapon.
"But if we don't have to face them, all the better. Our goal is to kill
them. To kill every one of them we can. Kill them when they sleep, when they
are looking the other way, when they are eating, when they are talking, when
they are drinking, when they are out for a stroll.
"They are evil. We must kill them, not fight them."
Owen threw up his hands. "But, Lord Rahl, if we were to start killing
them, they would take revenge on all the people they have."
Richard watched the men, waiting until he was sure everyone was paying
attention.
"You have just recognized the reality that they are evil. You're right;
they will probably start killing captives as a way to convince you to
surrender. But they are killing them now. Over time, if left to do as they
will, the killing they do will be on a vast scale. The faster we kill them,
the sooner it's over and the sooner the murder will stop. Some people will
lose their lives because of what we do, but in doing it, we will free all
the rest. If we do nothing, then we condemn those innocent people to the
mercy of evil and evil grants no mercy. As I've said before, you can't
negotiate with evil. You must destroy it."
A man cleared his throat. "Lord Rahl, some of our people have sided
with the men of the Order--believed their words. They will not want us to
harm the men of the Order."
Richard let out a heavy breath. He turned away for a moment, gazing off
into the gloom, before turning his attention once more to the men. "I've had
to kill people I knew my whole life because they sided with the Order, much
the same as you are saying. They came to believe the men of the Imperial
Order, and because I was opposed to the Order, they tried to kill me. It's a
terrible thing to have to kill someone like that, someone you know. I
believe the alternative is worse."
"The alternative?" the man asked.
"Yes, letting them murder me. That's the alternative: losing your life
and losing the cause for which you fight--the lives of your loved ones."
Richard's expression had turned grave. "If some of your people have joined
with the Order, or work to protect them, then it may be that you could end
up facing them. It will be their life, or yours. It could even mean the
lives of the rest of us. If they side with evil, then we must not allow them
to stop us from eliminating evil.
"This is part of what you must weigh in your decision to join us or
not. If you take up this struggle, you must accept that you may have to kill
people you know. You must weigh this in the choice you will make."
The men no longer seemed shocked by his words. They looked solemn as
they listened.
Kahlan saw small birds flitting past, looking to roost for the night.
The sky, the icy fog, was getting darker. She scanned the sky, ever watchful
for black-tipped races. With the weather in the pass so dreadful, she
doubted they would be around. The fog, at least, was comforting for that
reason.
Richard looked exhausted. She knew how hard it was for her to breathe
in the high, thin air, so it had to be far worse for him; she feared how,
because of the poison, the thin air robbed Richard of his strength. They
needed to be down out of the high pass.
"I have told you the truth and all I can for now," Richard told the
men. "Your future is now up to each of you."
He quietly asked Cara, Jennsen, and Tom to collect their things. He put
a gentle hand on Kahlan's back as he turned to the men and gestured down the
hill.
"We're going back down to our camp in those woods. You men decide what
you will do. If you are with us, then come down there in the protection of
the trees, where the races won't be able to spot us when the weather lifts.
We will need to finish making the weapons you will carry.
"If any of you choose not to join us, then you're on your own. I plan
not to be here, at this camp, for long. If the Order captures you they will
likely torture you and I don't want to be anywhere nearby when you scream
your lungs out as you reveal where our camp was."
The forlorn men stood huddled in a group.
"Lord Rahl," Owen asked, "you mean we must choose now?"
"I've told you all I can. How much longer can those being tortured,
raped, and murdered wait for you? If you wish to join us and be part of
life, then come down to our camp. If you choose not to be on our side, then
I wish you luck. But please don't try to follow us or I'll have to kill you.
I was once a woods guide; I will know if any of you follow us."
One of the men, the one who had been the first to show Richard two
pebbles to say that he would reveal the location of the antidote, stepped
forward, away from the rest of the men.
"Lord Rahl, my name is Anson." Tears filled his blue eyes. "I wanted
you to know that, to know who I am. I am Anson."
Richard nodded. "All right, Anson."
"Thank you for opening my eyes. I've always had some of the thoughts
that you explained. Now I understand why, and I understand the darkness kept
over my eyes. I don't want to live like that anymore. I don't want to live
by words that don't mean anything and I don't want the men of the Order to
control my life.
"My parents were murdered. I saw my father's body hanging from a pole.
He never hurt anyone. He did nothing to deserve such a murder. My sister was
taken. I know what those men are doing to her. I can't sleep at night
thinking about it, thinking about her terror.
"I want to fight back. I want to kill these evil men. They've earned
death. I want to grind them into dust, as you have said.
"I choose to join with you and fight to gain my freedom. I want to live
free. I want those I love to live free."
Kahlan was stunned to hear one of them say such things, especially
without first consulting with the rest of the men. She had watched the eyes
of the other men as Anson spoke. They all listened keenly to everything
Anson said.
Richard smiled as he placed a hand on the young man's shoulder.
"Welcome to D'Hara, Anson. Welcome home. We can use your help." He pointed
off at Cara and Tom picking up the weapons they'd brought to show the men.
"Why don't you help them take those things back down to our camp."
Anson grinned his agreement. The soft-spoken young man had broad
shoulders and a thickly muscled neck. He was genial, but looked determined.
If she were in the Imperial Order, Kahlan would not want to see such a
powerfully built man coming after her.
Anson eagerly tried to take the load from Cara's arms. She wouldn't
relinquish it, so he picked up the rest of the things and followed Tom down
the hill. Jennsen went along, too, pulling Betty behind by her rope, tugging
for the first few steps because Betty wanted them to stay with Richard and
Kahlan.
The other men watched as Anson started down the hill with Cara, Tom,
and Jennsen. They then moved off to the side, away from the statue, while
they whispered among themselves, deciding what they would do.
Richard glanced at the figure of Kaja-Rang before starting down the
hill. Something seemed to catch his eye.
"What's the matter?" Kahlan asked.
Richard pointed. "That writing. On the face of the pedestal, below his
feet."
Kahlan knew there had been no writing in that spot before, and she was
still too far away to really tell if she could see writing in the flecked
granite. She glanced back to see the others making their way down the hill,
but instead followed Richard when he started toward the statue. The men were
still off to the side, busily engaged in their discussion.
She could see the spot on the face of the pedestal where the warning
beacon had shattered. The sand from inside the statue representing
Richard was still splattered across the face of the pedestal.
As they got closer, she could hardly believe what she was beginning to
see. It looked as if the sand had eroded the stone to reveal lettering. The
words had not been there before; that much she was sure of.
Kahlan knew a number of languages, but she didn't know this one. She
recognized it, though. It was High D'Haran.
She hugged her arms to herself in the chill wind that had come up. The
somber clouds stirred restlessly. She peered around at the imposing
mountains, many hidden by a dark shroud of fog. Swirling curtains of snow
obscured other slopes in the distance. Through a small, brief opening in the
wretched weather, the valley she could see off through the pass offered the
promise of green and warmth.
And the Imperial Order.
Kahlan, close beside Richard, wished he would put a warm arm around
her. She watched as he stared at the faint letters in the stone. He was
being far too quiet for her peace of mind.
"Richard," she whispered, leaning close to him, "what does it say?"
Transfixed, he ran his fingers slowly, lightly over the letters, his
lips soundlessly pronouncing the High D'Haran words.
"Wizard's Eighth Rule," Richard whispered in translation. "Taiga
Vassternich."
Following behind the messenger, Verna stepped aside as a tight pack of
horses raced by. Their bellies were caked with mud, their nostrils flared
with excitement. The eyes of the cavalry soldiers bent over their withers
showed grim determination. With the constant level of activity of recent
weeks, she had to maintain a careful vigil whenever she stepped out of a
tent lest she be run down by one thing or another. If it wasn't horses
charging through camp, it was men at a run.
"Just up ahead," the messenger said over his shoulder.
Verna nodded to his young face as he glanced back. He was a polite
young man. His curly blond hair and his mannerly behavior combined to remind
her of Warren. She was defenseless against the wave of pain that cut through
her with the memory of Warren being gone, at the emptiness of each day.
She couldn't remember this messenger's name. There were so many young
men; it was hard to recall all their names. Though she tried her best, she
couldn't keep track of them. At least for a while now they hadn't been dying
at a terrifying rate. As harsh as the winters were up in D'Hara, such
weather had at least been a respite from the battles of the previous summer,
from the constant fighting and dying. With summer again upon them, she
didn't think that the relative quiet was going to last much longer.For now
the passes held against the Imperial Order. In such narrow and confined
places, the enemy's weight of numbers didn't mean so much. If only one man
would fit through a narrow hole in a stone wall, it meant little that there
were a hundred waiting behind him to go through, or a thousand. Defending
against one man, as it were, was not the impossible task that it was trying
to fight the onslaught of Jagang's entire force.
When she heard the distant thunder, felt it rolling through the ground,
she glanced up at the sky. The sun had not made an appearance in two days.
She didn't like the looks of the clouds building against the slopes of the
mountains. It looked like they could be in for a nasty storm.
The sound might not have been thunder. It was possible that it was
magic the enemy hammered against the shields across the passes. Such
battering would do them no good, but it made for uneasy sleeping, so, if for
no other reason, they kept at it.
Some of the men and the officers passing in the other direction gave
her a nod in greeting, or a smile, or a small wave. Verna didn't see any
Sisters of the Light. Many would be at the passes, tending shields, making
sure none of the Imperial Order soldiers could get through. Zedd had taught
them to consider every possibility, no matter how outlandish, and guard
against it. Day and night Verna ran every one of those places through her
mind, trying to think if there was anything they had overlooked, anything
they had missed, that might allow the enemy forces to flood in upon them.
If that happened, if they broke through, then there was nothing to stop
their advance into D'Hara except the defending army, and the defending army
was no match for the numbers on the other side of those mountains. She
couldn't think of any chink in their armor, but she worried constantly that
there might be one.
It seemed that the final battle might be on them at any moment. And
where was Richard?
Prophecy said that he was vital in the battle to decide the future
course of mankind. With it appearing that they very well could be one battle
from the end of it all, of freedom's final spark, the Lord Rahl ran the very
real risk of missing the moment of his greatest need. She could hardly
believe that for centuries Prophecy foretold of the one who would lead them,
and when the time finally arrives, he's off somewhere else. Lot of good
Prophecy was doing them.
Verna knew Richard's heart. She knew Kahlan's heart. It wasn't right to
doubt either of them, but Verna was the one staring into the eyes of
Jagang's horde and Richard was nowhere to be found.
From what little information Verna had gleaned from Ann's messages in
the journey book, there was trouble afoot. Verna could detect in Ann's
writings that the woman was greatly troubled by something. Whatever the
cause, Ann and Nathan were racing south, back down through the Old World.
Ann avoided explaining, possibly not wanting to burden them with anything
else, so Verna didn't press. She had enough trouble conceiving of why Ann
would have joined with the prophet rather than collaring him. Ann said only
that a journey book was not a good place to explain such things.
Despite the good work the man sometimes did, Verna considered Nathan
dangerous in the extreme. A thunderstorm brought life-giving rain, but if
you were the one struck by its lightning, it didn't do you much good. For
Ann and Nathan to join forces, as it were, must be indicative of the trouble
they were all in.
Verna had to remind herself that not everything was going against them,
not everything was hopeless and dismal. Jagang's army had, after all,
suffered a stunning blow at the hands of Zedd and Adie, losing staggering
numbers of soldiers in an instant and suffering vast numbers of casualties.
As a result the Imperial Order had turned away from Aydindril, leaving the
Wizard's Keep untouched. Despite the dream walker's covetous hands, the Keep
remained out of his reach.
Zedd and Adie had the defense of the Keep well in hand, so it was not
all trouble and strife; there were valuable assets on the side of the
D'Haran Empire. The Keep might yet prove decisive in helping to stop the
Imperial Order. Verna missed that old wizard, his advice, his wisdom, though
she would never admit it aloud. In that old man she could see where Richard
got many of his best qualities.
Verna halted when she saw Rikka striding across in front of her. Verna
snatched the Mord-Sith's arm.
"What is it, Prelate?" Rikka asked.
"Have you heard what this is about?"
Rikka gave her a blank look. "What what's about?"
The messenger stopped on the other side of the intersection of informal
roads. Horses trotted past in both directions, one pulling a cart of water
barrels. Fully armed men crossed on the side road. The encampment, one of
several, surrounded by a defensive berm, had evolved into a city of sorts,
with byways through its midst for men, horses, and wagons.
"Something is going on," Verna said.
"Sorry, I haven't heard anything."
"Are you busy?"
"Nothing urgent."
Verna took a good grip on Rikka's arm and started her walking. "General
Meiffert sent for me. Maybe you'd best come along. That way if he wants you,
too, we won't have to send someone looking for you."
Rikka shrugged. "Fine by me." The Mord-Sith's expression turned
suspicious. "Do you have any idea what's wrong?"
As Verna kept an eye on the messenger ahead of her weaving his way
among men, tents, wagons, horses, and repair stations, she glanced over at
Rikka. "Nothing that I know of." Verna's expression contorted a bit as she
tried to put her queazy mood into words. "Did you ever wake up and just feel
like there was something wrong, but you couldn't explain why it seemed like
it was going to be a bad day?"
"If it's to be a bad day, I see to that it's someone else's, and I'm
the cause of it."
Verna smiled to herself. "Too bad you're not gifted. You would make a
good Sister of the Light."
"I would rather be Mord-Sith and be able to protect Lord Rahl."
The messenger stopped at the side of the camp road. "Back there,
Prelate. General Meiffert said to bring you to that tent by the trees."
Verna thanked the young man and made her way across the soft ground,
Rikka at her side. The tent was away from the main activity of the camp, in
a quieter area where officers often met with scouts just back from patrols.
Verna's mind raced, trying to imagine what news scouts could have brought
back. There was no alarm, so the passes still held. If there was trouble,
there would be a flurry of activity in the camp, but it seemed about the
same as any other day.
Guards saw Verna coming and ducked into the tent to announce her
arrival. Almost immediately, the general stepped out of the tent and rushed
to meet her. His blue eyes reflected iron determination. The man's face,
though, was ashen.
"I saw Rikka," Verna explained as General Meiffert dipped his head in a
hurried greeting. "I thought I ought to bring her just in case you needed
her, too."
The tall, blond-headed D'Haran glanced briefly at Rikka. "Yes, that's
fine. Come in, please, both of you."
Verna snatched his sleeve. "What's this about? What's going on? Is
something wrong?"
The general's eyes moved to Rikka and back to Verna. "We've had a
message from Jagang."
Rikka leaned in, her voice taking on an edge. "How did a messenger from
Jagang get through without someone killing them?"
It was standard practice that no one came through for any reason. They
didn't want so much as a mouse making it through. There was no telling if it
might be some kind of trick.
"It was a small wagon, pulled by a single horse." He tilted his head
toward Verna. "The men thought the wagon was empty. Remembering your
instructions, they let it through."
Verna was somewhat surprised that Ann's warning to let an empty wagon
through had been so correct. "A wagon came of its own accord? An empty wagon
drove itself in?"
"Not exactly. The men who saw it thought it was empty. The horse
appears to be a workhorse that is used to walking roads, so it plodded along
the road as it had been trained." General Meiffert pressed his lips together
at the confusion on Verna's face and then turned away from the tent. "Come
on, and I'll show you."
He led them to the third tent down the line and held the flap aside.
Verna ducked in, followed by Rikka and the general. On a bench inside sat a
young novice, Holly, with her arm around a very frightened-looking girl no
more than ten years old.
"I asked Holly to stay with her," General Meiffert whispered. "I
thought it might make her less nervous than a soldier standing over her."
"Of course," Verna said. "Very wise of you. She's the one who brought
the message, then?"
The young general nodded. "She was sitting in the back of the wagon, so
the men seeing it coming at first thought it was empty."
Verna now understood why such a messenger got through. Soldiers weren't
nearly so likely to kill a child, and the Sisters could test her to insure
she was no threat. Verna wondered if Zedd would have something to say about
that; threat often came in surprising packages. Verna approached the pair on
the bench, smiling as she bent down.
"I'm Verna. Are you all right, young lady?" The girl nodded. "Would you
like something to eat?"
Trembling slightly as her big brown eyes took in the people looking at
her, she nodded again.
"Prelate," Holly said, "Valery already went to get her something."
"I see," Verna said, holding the smile in place. She knelt down and
gently patted the girl's hands in her lap to reassure her. "Do you live
around here?"
The girl's big brown eyes blinked, trying to judge the danger of the
adult before her. She calmed just a little at Verna's smile and kind touch.
"A bit of travel to the north, ma'am."
"And someone sent you to see us?"
The big brown eyes filled with tears, but she didn't cry. "My parents
are back there, down over the pass. The soldiers there have them. As guests,
they said. Men came and took us to their army. We've had to stay there for
the last few weeks. Today they told me to take a letter over the pass to the
people here. They said that if I did as I was told, they would let my mother
and father and me go home."
Verna again patted the girl's small hands. "I see. Well, that's good of
you to help your parents."
"I just want to go home."
"And you shall, child." Verna straightened. "We'll get you some food,
dear, so you have a full tummy before you go back to your parents."
The girl stood and curtsied. "Thank you for your kindness. May I go
back after I eat, then?"
"Certainly," Verna said. "I'll just go read the letter you brought
while you have a nice meal, and then you can return to your parents."
As she sat back up on the bench, squirming her bottom back beside
Holly, she couldn't help keeping a wary eye on the Mord-Sith.
Trying not to show any apprehension, Verna smiled her good-bye to the
girl before leading the others out of the tent. She couldn't even imagine
what Jagang was up to.
"What's in the letter?" Verna asked as they hurried to the command
tent.
General Meiffert paused outside the tent, his thumb burnishing a brass
button on his coat as he met Verna's gaze. "I'd just as soon you read it for
yourself, Prelate. Some of it is plain enough. Some of it, well, some of it
I'm hoping you can explain to me."
Stepping into the tent, Verna saw Captain Zimmer waiting off to the
side. The square-jawed man was absent his usual infectious smile. The
captain was in charge of the D'Haran special forces, a group of men whose
job it was to go out and spend their days and nights sneaking around in
enemy territory killing as many of the enemy as possible. There seemed to be
an endless supply. The captain seemed determined to use up the supply.
The men in Captain Zimmer's corps were very good at what they did. They
collected strings of ears they took from the enemies they killed. Kahlan
used to always ask to see their collection whenever they returned. The
captain and his men dearly missed her.
They all glanced up at a flash of lightning. The storm was getting
closer. After a moment's pause, the ground shook with the rolling rumble of
thunder.
General Meiffert retrieved a small folded paper from the table and
handed it to Verna.
"This is what the girl brought."
Looking briefly to the two men's grim expressions, Verna unfolded the
paper and read the neat script.
/ have Wizard Zorander and a sorceress named Adie. I now hold the
Wizard's Keep in Aydindril and all it contains. My Slide will soon present
me with Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor.
Your cause is lost. If you surrender now and open the passes, I will
spare your men. If you do not, I will put every one of them to death.
Signed, Jagang the Just.
The arm holding the paper in her trembling fingers lowered.
"Dear Creator," Verna whispered. She felt dizzy.
Rikka snatched the paper from her hand and stood facing away as she
read it. She cursed under her breath.
"We have to go get him," Rikka said. "We have to get Zedd and Adie away
from Jagang."
Captain Zimmer shook his head. "There is no way we could accomplish
such a thing."
Rikka's face went red with rage. "He's saved my life before! Yours,
too! We have to get him out of there!"
In contrast to Rikka's anger, Verna spoke softly. "We all feel the same
about him. Zedd has probably saved all of our lives more than once.
Unfortunately, Jagang will do all the worse to him for it."
Rikka shook the message before their faces. "So we are just going to
let him die there? Let Jagang kill him? We sneak in, or something!"
Captain Zimmer rested the heel of his hand on a long knife at his belt.
"Mistress Rikka, if I told you that I had a man hidden somewhere in this
camp, in one of the hundreds of thousands of tents, and no one would bother
you or ask you any questions, but would allow you to freely go about a
search, how long do you think it would take you to find such a hidden man?"
"But they won't be in just any tent," Rikka said. "Look at us, here.
This message came. Did it go to just any random tent in the whole camp? No,
it went to a place where such things are handled."
"I've been to the Imperial Order encampment too many times to count,"
Captain Zimmer said as he cast his arm out toward the enemy over the
mountains to the west. "You can't even imagine how big their camp is. They
have millions of men there.
"Their encampment is a quagmire of cutthroats. It's a place of chaos.
That disorder allows us to slip in, kill some of them, and get out fast. You
don't want to be there very long. They recognize outsiders, especially blond
outsiders.
"Moreover, there are layers of different kinds of men. Most of the
soldiers are little more than a mob of thugs that Jagang turns loose from
time to time. None of them are allowed beyond a certain point within their
own camp. The men guarding the areas with higher security are not nearly so
stupid and lazy as the common soldiers.
"The men in those protected areas aren't as numerous as the common
soldiers, but they are trained professionals. They are alert, vigilant, and
deadly. If you could somehow manage to get through the sea of misfits to
reach the island at the core where the torture and command tents are, those
professional soldiers would have you on the end of a pike in no time.
"Even they are not all the same. The outer ring of this core, besides
having these professionals guarding it, is where the Sisters are. They both
live there and use magic to watch for intruders. Beyond them are further
rings, starting with the elite guards, and then, finally, the emperor's
personal guards. These are men who have been fighting with Jagang for years.
They kill anyone, even the elite guard officers, if they become at all
suspicious of them. If they even hear word of someone saying disparaging
things about the emperor, they hunt them down and have them tortured. After
being tortured, if they live through it, they are then put to death.
"I'm not saying that my men and I would be unwilling to risk our lives
trying to get Zedd out of there; I'm saying that we would be giving our
lives up for nothing."
The mood in the tent could not have been more hopeless.
The general gestured with the paper when Rikka handed it back. "Any
idea what a Slide is, Prelate?"
Verna met his blue-eyed gaze. "A soul stealer."
The general frowned. "A what?"
"In the great war--three thousand years ago--the wizards of that time
created weapons out of people. Dream walkers, like Jagang, were one such
weapon. The best way I can explain it to you is that a Slide is in some ways
like a dream walker. A dream walker can enter a person's mind and seize
control of them. A Slide, I believe, is something like that, only he seizes
your spirit, your soul."
Rikka made a face. "Why?"
Verna lifted her hands in frustration. "I don't really know. To control
their victim, perhaps.
Altering gifted people was an ancient practice. They sometimes changed
gifted people with magic to suit a specific purpose. With Sub-tractive Magic
they took away traits they didn't want, and then they used Additive Magic to
add to or enhance a trait they did want. What they created were monsters.
"I'm not really well versed in the subject. When I became Prelate I had
access to books I had never seen before. That's where I saw the reference to
Slides. They were used to slip into another person's being and steal the
essence of who they where--their spirit, their soul.
"Altering people in such a way as to create these Slides is a long-dead
art. I'm afraid that I don't know a great deal about the subject. I do
remember reading that the ones called Slides were exceedingly dangerous."
"Long-dead art," the general muttered. He looked like he was making a
great effort to restrain himself. "Those wizards of that time made such
weapons as Slides, but how could Jagang? He's no wizard. Could it be that
he's lying?"
Verna thought about the question a moment. "He has gifted people under
his direct control. Some are able to use underworld magic. As I said, I
don't know a great deal about it, but I suppose it's possible that he was
able to do it."
"How?" the general demanded. "How could Jagang do such things? He's not
even a wizard."
Verna clasped her hands before herself. "He has Sisters of the Light
and the Dark. In theory, I suppose he has what he needs. He is a man who
studies history. I know from personal experience that he puts great value in
books. He has an extensive and quite valuable collection. Nathan, the
prophet, was very concerned about this very thing, and destroyed a number of
important volumes before they could fall into Jagang's possession.
"Still, the emperor possesses a great many others--in fact, he has a
huge collection. Now that he has captured the Keep, he has access to
important libraries. Those books are dangerous, or they wouldn't have been
sealed away in the Wizard's Keep in the first place."
"And now Jagang has control of them." General Meiffert ran his fingers
back through his hair. He gripped the back of the chair set before the small
table and leaned his weight on his arms. "Do you think he really has Zedd
and Adie?"
The question was a plea for some thread of hope. Verna swallowed as she
carefully considered the question. She answered in an honest voice, not
wanting to be the founder of a false faith. Since she'd read the message
from Jagang, she, herself, had been searching for that same thread of hope.
"I don't think he's a man who would find any satisfaction in bragging
about something he hadn't actually accomplished. I think he must be telling
us the truth and wants to gloat over his accomplishment."
The general released his grip on the chair and turned as he considered
Verna's words. Finally, he asked a question worse yet.
"Do you think he's telling the truth that this Slide has Lord Rahl and
the Mother Confessor? Do you think this terrible creation, this Slide, will
soon deliver the two of them to Jagang?"
Verna wondered if this was the reason for Ann and Nathan's headlong
rush down through the Old World. Verna knew that Richard and Kahlan were
down there, somewhere. There could be no more urgent reason for Ann and
Nathan to race south. Was it possible that this Slide had already captured
them, or captured their souls? Verna's heart sank. She wondered if Ann
already knew that the Slide had Richard, and that was why she wasn't saying
much about her mission.
"I don't know," Verna finally answered.
"I think Jagang just made a mistake," Captain Zimmer said.
Verna lifted an eyebrow. "Such as?"
"He has just betrayed to us how much trouble he's having with the
passes. He's just told us how well our defenses are working and how
desperate he is. If he doesn't get through this season, his whole army will
have to sit out another winter. He wants us to let him through.
"D'Haran winters are hard, especially on men such as his, men not used
to the conditions. I saw with my own eyes good indications of how many men
he lost last winter. Hundreds of thousands of men died from disease."
"He has plenty of men," General Meiffert said. "He can afford the
losses. He has a steady supply of new troops to replace the ones who died
from the fevers and sickness last winter."
"So, you think the captain is wrong?" Verna asked.
"No, I agree that Jagang would like very much to get it over with; I
just don't think he cares how many of his men die. I think he's eager to
rule the world. Patient as he generally is, he sees the end at hand, the
goal within his grasp. We're the only thing standing in his way, keeping his
prize from falling to him. His men, too, are impatient for the plunder.
"His choice to split the New World first by driving up to Aydindril has
left him close to his goal, but in some ways, even more distant from it. If
he can't make it through the passes, he may decide to pick up his army and
make a long march back south again, to the Kern River valley, to where he
can then come over and up into D'Hara. Once his army takes to the open
ground down south, there's no way for us to stop them.
"If he can't break through the passes now, it means a long march and a
long delay, but he will still have us in the end. He would rather have us
now and is willing to offer the lives of our men to close a deal."
Verna stared off. "It's a grave mistake to try to appease evil."
"I agree," General Meiffert said. "Once we opened the passes, he would
slaughter every last man."
The mood in the tent was as gloomy as the sky outside.
"I think we should send him back a letter," Rikka said. "I think we
should tell him that we don't believe him that he has Zedd and Adie. If he
expects us to believe him, he should prove it; he should send us their
heads."
Captain Zimmer smiled at the suggestion.
The general tapped a finger on the table as he thought it over. "If
it's as you say, Prelate, and Jagang really does have them, then there's
nothing we can do about it. He will kill them. After what Zedd did to
Jagang's force back in Aydindril, to say nothing of all the havoc he caused
the Imperial Order last summer when the Mother Confessor was with us, I know
it won't be an easy death, but he will kill them in the end."
"Then you agree that nothing else can be done," Verna said.
General Meiffert wiped a hand across his face. "I hate admitting it,
but I'm afraid they're lost. I don't think we should give Jagang the
satisfaction of knowing how we truly feel about it."
Verna's head spun at the thought of Zedd and Adie being put to torture,
of them being in the hands of Jagang and his Sisters of the Dark. She
quailed at the thought of the D'Haran forces losing Zedd. There simply was
no one with his experience and knowledge. There was no one who could replace
him.
"We write Jagang a letter, then," Verna said, "and tell Jagang we don't
believe he has Zedd and Adie."
"The only thing we can do," Rikka said, "is to deny Jagang what he
wants most. What he wants is for us to give up."
General Meiffert pulled out the chair at the table, inviting Verna to
sit and write the letter. "If Jagang is angered by such a letter, he just
might send us their heads. If he did, that would spare them terrible
suffering. That's the only thing we can do for them--the best we could do
for them."
Verna took stock of the grim faces and saw only resolve at what had to
be done. She sat in the chair the general held for her, wiggled the stopper
out of the ink bottle, and then took a piece of paper from a small stack in
a box to the side.
She dipped the pen and stared at the paper for a moment, trying to
decide how to phrase the letter. She tried to imagine what Kahlan would
write. As it came to her, she bent over the table and began writing.
/ don't believe you are competent enough to capture Wizard Zoran-der.
If you were, you would send us his head to prove it. Don't bother me anymore
with your whining for us to open the passes for you because you are too
inept to do it yourself.
Reading over Verna's shoulder, Rikka said, "I like it."
Verna looked up at the others. "How should I sign it?"
"What would make Jagang the most angry--or worried?" Captain Zimmer
asked.
Verna tapped the back of the pen against her chin as she thought. Then
it came to her. She put pen to paper.
Signed, the Mother Confessor.
Richard scanned the site off in the broad, green valley, watching for
any sign of troops. He looked over at Owen.
"That's Witherton?"
Hands pressed against the rich forest floor at the crown of a low
ridge, Owen pulled himself closer to the edge. He stretched his neck to see
over the rise and finally nodded before pulling back.
Richard had thought it would be bigger. "I don't see any soldiers."
Owen crawled back away from the edge. In the shadowed cover among ferns
and low scrub, he stood and brushed the moist crumbles of leaves from his
shirt and trousers.
"The men of the Order mostly stay inside the town. They have no
interest in helping to do the work. They eat our food and gamble with the
things they have taken from our people. When they do these things they are
interested in little else." His face heated to red. "At night, they used to
collect some of our women." Since the reason was obvious enough, Owen didn't
put words to it. "In the daytime they sometimes come out to check on our
people who work in the fields, or watch to see that they come back in at
night."
If the soldiers had once camped outside the city walls, they no longer
did. Apparently, they preferred the more comfortable accommodations within
the town. They had learned that these people would offer no resistance; they
could be cowed and controlled by words alone. The men of the Imperial Order
were safe sleeping among them.
The wall around Witherton blocked much of Richard's view of the place.
Other than through the open gates, there wasn't much to see. The wall was
constructed of upright posts not a great deal taller than the height of a
man. The posts, a variety of sizes no bigger around than a hand-width, were
bound tightly together, top and bottom, with rope. The wavy wall snaked
around the town, leaned in or out in places. There was no bulwark, or even a
trench before the wall. Other than keeping out grazing deer or maybe a
roaming bear, the walls certainly didn't look strong enough to withstand an
attack from the Imperial Order soldiers.
The soldiers had no doubt made a point of using the gate into the town
for reasons other than the strength of the wall. Opening the gates for
soldiers of the Imperial Order had been a symbolic sign of submission.
Broad swaths of the valley were clear of trees, leaving fields of grain
to grow alongside row crops in communal gardens. Tree limbs knitted into
fencing kept in cows. There, the wild grasses were chewed low. Chickens
roamed freely near coops. A few sheep grazed on the coarse grass.
The smells of rich soil, wildflowers, and grasses carried on a light
breeze into the woods where Richard watched. It was a great relief to have
finally descended from the pass. It had been getting difficult to breathe in
the thin air up on the high slopes. It was considerably warmer, too, down
out of the lofty mountain pass, although he still felt cold.
Richard checked the sweep of open valley one last time and then he and
Owen made their way back into the dense tangle of woods toward where the
others waited. The trees were mostly hardwoods, maple and oak, along with
patches of birch, but there were also stands of towering evergreens. Birds
chirped from the dense foliage. A squirrel up on the limb of a pine
chattered at them as they passed. The deep shade below the thick forest
crown was interrupted only occasionally by mottled sunlight.
Some of the men, swatting at bugs, stood in a rush when Richard led
Owen into the secluded forest opening. Richard was glad to stand in the
warmth of sunlight slanting in at a low angle.
It appeared that the open area in the dense woods had been created when
a huge old maple had been hit by lightning. The maple split and fell in two
directions, taking other trees down with it. Kahlan hopped down off her seat
on the trunk of the fallen monarch. Betty, her tail wagging in a blur,
greeted Richard, eagerly looking for attention, or a treat. Richard
scratched behind her ears, the goat's favorite form of attention.
More of the men came into the open from behind upturned roots that had
been turned silver by years of exposure to the elements. A crop of spruce,
none more than chest high, had sprung up in the sunny spot created when the
old maple had died such a sudden and violent death. Spread among Kahlan,
Cara, Jennsen, and Tom were the rest of the men--his army.
Back up in the pass, Ansons saying that he wanted to help rid his
people of the Imperial Order soldiers seemed to have galvanized the rest of
the men, and the balance had finally tipped. Once it had, a lifetime of
darkness and doubt gave way to a hunger to live in the light of truth. The
men all declared, in a breathtaking moment of determination, that they
wanted to join with Richard to be part of the D'Haran Empire and fight the
soldiers of the Imperial Order to gain their freedom.
They had all decided that the men of the Order were evil and deserved
death, even if they themselves had to do the killing.
When Tom glanced down to see Betty going back to browsing on weeds,
Richard noticed that the man's brow was beaded with sweat. Cara fanned
herself with a handful of big leaves from a mountain maple. Richard was
about to ask them how they could be sweating when it was such a cool day
when he realized that it was the poison making him cold. With icy dread, he
recalled how the last time he had gotten cold, the poison had nearly killed
him that awful night.
Anson and another man, John, took off their packs. They were the ones
planning to slip in among the field-workers returning to town at nightfall.
Once they sneaked into town, the two men planned to recover the antidote.
"I think I'd better go with you," Richard said to Anson. "John, why
don't you wait here with the others."
John looked surprised. "If you wish, Lord Rahl, but there is no need
for you to go."
It wasn't supposed to be a foray that would result in any violence,
only the recovery of the antidote. The attack on the Imperial Order soldiers
was to be after the antidote had been safely recovered and they had assessed
the situation, the number of men, and the layout.
"John is right," Cara said. "They can do it."
Richard was having difficulty breathing. He had to make an effort not
to cough.
"I know. I just think I had better have a look myself."
Cara and Kahlan cast sidelong glances at each other.
"But if you go in there with Anson," Jennsen said, "you can't take your
sword."
"I'm not going to start a war. I just want to get a good look around at
the place."
Kahlan stepped closer. "The two of them can scout the town and give you
a report. You can rest--they will only be gone a few hours."
"I know, but I don't think I want to wait that long."
By the way she appraised his eyes, he thought she must be able to see
how much pain he was in. She didn't argue the point further but instead
nodded her agreement.
Richard pulled the baldric and sword belt off over his head. He slipped
it all over Kahlan's head, laying the baldric across her shoulder.
"Here. I pronounce you Seeker of Truth."
She accepted the sword and the honor by planting her fists on her hips.
"Now don't you go starting anything while you're in there. That's not the
plan. You and Anson will be alone. You wait until we're all together."
"I know. I just need to get the antidote and then we'll be back in no
time."
Beside getting the antidote, Richard wanted to see the enemy forces,
how they were placed, and the layout of the town. Having the men draw a map
in the dirt was one thing, seeing it for himself was another; these men
didn't know how to evaluate threat points.
One of the men took off his light coat, something a number of the men
wore, and held it out to Richard. "Here, Lord Rahl, wear this. It will make
you look more like one of us."
With a nod of thanks, Richard drew the coat on. He had changed out of
his war wizard's outfit into traveling clothes, so he didn't think he would
look out of place with the way the men from the town of Witherton looked.
The man was nearly Richard's size, so the coat fit well enough. It also hid
his belt knife.
Jennsen shook her head. "I don't know, Richard. You just don't look
like one of them. You still look like Lord Rahl."
"What are you talking about?" Richard held out his arms, looking down
at himself. "What's wrong with the way I look?"
"Don't stand up so straight," she said.
"Hunch your shoulders and hang your head a little," Kahlan offered.
Richard took their advice seriously; he hadn't thought about it, but
the men did tend to hunch a lot. He didn't want to stand out. He had to
blend in if he didn't want to raise the suspicions of the soldiers. He bent
over a little.
"How's that?"
Jennsen screwed up her mouth. "Not much different."
"But I'm bending down."
"Lord Rahl," Cara said in a soft voice as she gave him a meaningful
look, "you remember how it was to walk behind Denna, when she held the chain
to the collar around your neck. Make yourself like that."
Richard blinked at her. The mental image of his time as a captive of a
Mord-Sith hit him like a slap. He pressed his lips tight, not saying
anything, and conceded with a single nod. The memory of that forsaken time
was depressing enough that he would have no trouble using it to fall into
the role.
"We had better be on our way," Anson said. "Now that the sun is falling
behind the mountains, darkness comes quickly." He hesitated, then spoke
again. "Lord Rahl, the men of the Order will not know you--I mean they
probably will not realize you aren't from our town. But our people do not
carry weapons; if they see that knife, they will know you are not from our
town, and they will send up an alarm."
Richard lifted open the coat, looking at the knife. "You're right." He
loosened his belt and removed the sheath holding the knife. He handed it to
Cara for safekeeping.
Richard cupped a hand quickly to the side of Kahlan's face as a way of
saying his good-bye. She seized the hand in both of hers and pressed a quick
kiss to the backs of his fingers. Her hands looked so small and delicate
holding his. He sometimes kidded her that he didn't see how she could
possibly get anything done with such small hands. Her answer was that her
hands were a normal size and perfectly adequate, and his were simply
outsized.
The men all noticed Kahlan's gesture of affection. Richard was not
embarrassed that they did. He wanted them to know that other people were the
same as they in important, human ways. This was what they were fighting
for--the chance to be human, to love and cherish loved ones, to live their
lives as they wanted.
The light faded quickly as Richard and Anson made their way through the
woods running beside fields of wild grasses. Richard wanted to work around
to where the forest came in closer to the men out weeding in the gardens and
tending to animals. With the nearby mountains to the west being so high, the
sun vanished behind them earlier than what would normally be sunset, leaving
the sky a swath of deep bluish green and the valley in an odd golden gloom.
By the time he and Anson had reached the place where they would leave
the woods, it was still a little too light, so they waited a short while
until Richard felt the murky light in the fields was dim enough to hide
them. The town was some distance away and since Richard couldn't make out
any men outside the gates, he reasoned that if soldiers were watching, then
they couldn't see him, either.
As they moved quickly through the field of wild grass, staying low and
out of sight, Anson pointed. "There, those men going back to town, we should
follow them."
Richard spoke quietly back over his shoulder. "All right, but don't
forget, we don't want to catch up with them or they might recognize you and
make a fuss. Let them stay a good distance ahead of us."
When they reached the town walls, Richard saw that the gates were no
more than two sections of the picket walls. A couple of posts no bigger than
Richard's wrist had been tied sideways to stiffen two sections of wall and
make them into gates. The ropes that tied the posts together served as the
hinges. The sections were simply lifted and swung around to open or close
them. It was far from a secure fortification.
In the murky light of twilight, the two guards milling around just
inside the gates and watching workers return couldn't really see much of
Richard and Anson. To the guards, they would appear to be two more workers.
The Order understood the value of workers; they needed slaves to do the work
so that the soldiers might eat.
Richard hunched his shoulders and hung his head as he walked. He
remembered those terrible times as a captive when, wearing a collar, he
walked behind Denna, devoid of all hope of ever again being free. Thinking
of that inhuman time, he shuffled through the open gates. The guards didn't
pay him any attention.
Just as they were nearly past the guards, the closest one reached out
and snatched Anson's sleeve, spinning him back around.
"I want some eggs," the young soldier said. "Give me some of the eggs
you collected."
Anson stood wide-eyed, not knowing what to do. It seemed ludicrous that
these two young men were allowed to serve their cause by being bullies.
Richard stepped up beside Anson and spoke quickly, remembering to bow his
head so that he wouldn't loom over the man.
"We have no eggs, sir. We were weeding the bean fields. I'm sorry. We
will bring you eggs tomorrow, if it pleases you."
Richard glanced up just as the guard backhanded him, knocking him flat
on his back. He instantly took a firm grip on his anger. Wiping blood from
his mouth, he decided to stay where he was.
"He's right," Anson said, drawing the guard's attention. "We were
weeding beans. If you wish it, we will bring you some eggs tomorrow--as many
as you want."
The guard grunted a curse at them and swaggered off, taking his
companion with him. They headed for a nearby long, low structure with a
torch lashed to a pole outside a low door. In the flickering light of that
torch, Richard couldn't make out what the place was, but it appeared to be a
building dug partway into the ground so that the eaves were at eye level.
After the two soldiers were a safe distance away, Anson offered Richard a
hand to help him up. Richard didn't think he'd been hit that hard, but his
head was spinning.
As they started out, faces back in doorways and around dark corners
peeked out to watch them. When Richard looked their way, the people ducked
back in.
"They know you are not from here," Anson whispered.
Richard didn't trust that one of those people wouldn't call the guards.
"Let's hurry up and get what we came here for."
Anson nodded and hurriedly led Richard down a narrow street with what
looked like little more than huts huddled together to each side. The single
torch burning outside the long building where the soldiers had gone provided
little light down the street. The town, at least what Richard could see of
it in the dark, was a pretty shabby-looking place. In fact, he wouldn't call
it a town so much as a village. Many of the structures appeared to be
housing for livestock, not people. Only rarely were there any lights coming
from any of the squat buildings and the light he did see looked like it came
from candles, not lamps.
At the end of the street, Richard followed Anson through a small side
door into a larger building. The cows inside mooed at the intrusion. Sheep
rustled in their pens. A few goats in other pens bleated. Richard and Anson
paused to let the animals settle down before making their way through the
barn to a ladder at the side. Richard followed Anson as he climbed quickly
to a small hayloft.
At the end of the loft, Anson reached up over a low rafter to where it
tied into the wall behind a cross brace. "Here it is," he said as he
grimaced, stretching his arm up into the hiding place.
He came out with a small, square-sided bottle and handed it to Richard.
"This is the antidote. Hurry and drink it, and then let's get out of here."
The large door banged open. Even though it was dark outside, the torch
down the street provided just enough light to silhouette the broad shape of
a man standing in the doorway. By his demeanor, he had to be a soldier.
Richard pulled the stopper from the bottle. The antidote had the slight
aroma of cinnamon. He quickly downed it, hardly noticing its sweet, spicy
taste. He never took his eyes off the man in the doorway.
"Who's in here?" the man bellowed.
"Sir," Richard called down, "I'm just getting some hay for the
livestock."
"In the dark? What are you up to? Get down here right now."
Richard put a hand against Anson's chest and pushed him back into the
darkness. "Yes, sir. I'm coming," Richard called to the soldier as he
hurried down the ladder.
At the bottom of the ladder, he turned and saw the man coming toward
him. Richard reached for his knife under the coat he was wearing, only
remembering then that he didn't have his knife. The soldier was still
silhouetted against the open barn door. Richard was in the darkness and the
man probably wouldn't be able to see him. He silently moved away from the
ladder.
As the soldier passed near him, Richard stepped in behind him and
reached to his side, seizing the knife sheathed behind the axe hanging on
his belt. Richard gingerly drew the knife just as the man stopped and looked
up the ladder to the hayloft.
As he was looking up, Richard snatched a fistful of hair with one hand
and reached around with the other, slicing deep through the soldier's throat
before he realized what was happening. Richard held the man tight as he
struggled, a wet gurgling the only sound coming from him. He reached back,
frantically grabbing at Richard for a moment before his movements lost their
energy and he went limp.
"Anson," Richard whispered up the ladder as he let the man slip to the
ground, "come on. Let's go."
Anson hurried down the ladder, coming to a halt as he reached the
bottom and turned around to see the dark shape of the dead man sprawled on
the ground.
"What happened?"
Richard looked up from his work at undoing the weapon belt around the
dead weight of the soldier. "I killed him."
"Oh."
Richard handed the knife, in its sheath, to Anson. "Here you go. Now
you have a real weapon--a long knife."
Richard rolled the dead soldier over to pull the belt the rest of the
way out from under the man. As he tugged it free, he heard a noise and
turned just in time to see another soldier running in toward them.
Anson slammed the long knife hilt-deep into the man's chest. The man
staggered back. Richard shot to his feet, bringing the weapon belt with him.
The soldier gasped for breath as he clutched at the knife handle. He dropped
heavily to his knees. One hand clawed at the air above him as he swayed.
Pulling a final gasp, he toppled to his side.
Anson stood staring at the man lying in a heap, the knife jutting from
his chest. He bent, then, and pulled his new knife free.
"Are you all right?" Richard whispered when Anson stood.
Anson nodded. "I recognize this man. We called him the weasel. He
deserved to die."
Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of the shoulder. "You did
well. Now, let's get out of here."
As they made their way back up the street, Richard asked Anson to wait
while he checked down alleyways and between low buildings, searching for
soldiers. As a guide, Richard often scouted at night. In the darkness, he
was in his element.
The town was a lot smaller than he had expected. It was also much less
organized than he thought it would be, with no apparent order to where the
simple structures had been built. The streets through the haphazard town, if
they could be called streets, were in most cases little more than footpaths
between clusters of small, single-room buildings. He saw a few handcarts,
but nothing more elaborate. There was only one road through the town,
leading back to the barn where they had recovered the antidote and run into
the two soldiers, that was wide enough to accommodate a wagon. His search
didn't turn up any patrolling soldiers.
"Do you know if all the men of the Order stay together?" Richard asked
when he returned to Anson, waiting in the shadows.
"At night they go inside. They sleep in our place, by where we came
in."
"You mean that low building where the first two soldiers went?"
"That's right. That's where most people used to gather at night, but
now the men of the Order use it for themselves."
Richard frowned at the man. "You mean you all slept together?"
Anson sounded mildly surprised by the question. "Yes. We were together
whenever possible. Many people had a house where they could work, eat, and
keep belongings, but they rarely slept in them. We usually all slept in the
sleeping houses where we gathered to talk about the day. Everyone wanted to
be together. Sometimes people would sleep in another place, but mostly we
sleep there together so we can all feel safe--much like we all slept
together at night as we made our way down out of the pass with the statue."
"And everyone just... lay down together?"
Anson diverted his eyes. "Couples often slept apart from others by
being with one another under a single blanket, but they were still together
with our people. In the dark, though, no one could see them . .. together
under a blanket."
Richard had trouble imagining such a way of life. "The whole town fit
in that sleeping building? There was enough room?"
"No, there were too many of us to all sleep in one sleeping house.
There are two." Anson pointed. "There is another on the far side of the one
you saw."
"Let's go have a look, then."
They moved quickly back toward the town gates, such as they were, and
toward the sleeping houses. The dark street was empty. Richard didn't see
anyone on the paths between buildings. What people were left in the town had
apparently gone to sleep or were afraid to come out in the darkness.
A door in one of the small homes opened a crack, as if someone inside
were peering out. The door opened wider and a thin figure dashed out toward
them.
"Anson!" came the whispered voice.
It was a boy, in his early teens. He fell to his knees and clutched
Anson's arm, kissing his hand in joy to see him.
"Anson, I am so happy that you are home! We've missed you so much. We
feared for you--feared that you were murdered."
Anson grabbed the boy by his shirt and hauled him to his feet. "Bernie,
I'm well and I'm happy to see you well, but you must go back in now. The men
will see you. If they catch you outside ..."
"Oh, please, Anson, come sleep at our house. We're so alone and
afraid."
"Who?"
"Just me and my grandfather, now. Please come in and be with us."
"I can't right now. Maybe another time."
The boy peered up at Richard, then, and when he saw that he didn't
recognize him shrank back.
"This is a friend of mine, Bernie--from another town." Anson squatted
down beside the boy. "Please, Bernie, I will return, but you must go back
inside and stay there tonight. Don't come out. We fear there might be
trouble. Stay inside. Tell your grandfather my words, will you now?"
Bernie finally agreed and ran back into the dark doorway. Richard was
eager to get out of the town before anyone else came out to pay their
respects. If he and Anson weren't careful, they would end up attracting the
attention of the soldiers.
They moved quickly the rest of the way up the street, using buildings
for cover. Pressing up against the side of one at the head of the street,
Richard peered around the corner at the squat daub-and-wattle sleeping house
where the guards had gone. The door was open, letting soft light spill out
across the ground.
"In there?" Richard whispered. "You all slept in there?"
"Yes. That is one of the sleeping houses, and beyond it the other one."
Richard thought about it for a moment. "What did you sleep on?"
"Hay. We put blankets over it, usually. We changed the hay often to
keep it fresh, but these men do not bother. They sleep like animals in dusty
old hay."
Richard looked out through the open gates at the fields. He looked back
at the sleeping house.
"And now the soldiers all sleep in there?"
"Yes. They took the place from us. They said it was to be their
barracks. Now our people--the ones still alive--must sleep wherever they
can."
Richard made Anson stay put while he slipped through the shadows, out
of the light of the torch, to survey the area beyond the first building. The
second long structure also had soldiers inside laughing and talking. There
were more men than were needed to guard such a small place, but Witherton
was the gateway into Bandakar--and the gateway out.
"Come on," Richard said as he came up beside Anson, "let's get back to
the others. I have an idea."
As they made their way to the gate, Richard looked up, as he often did,
to check the starry sky for any sign of black-tipped races. He saw instead
that the pole to each side of the gate held a body hanging by the ankles.
When Anson saw them, he paused, held frozen by the horror of the sight.
Richard laid a hand on the man's shoulder and leaned close. "Are you
all right?"
Anson shook his head. "No. But I will be better when the men who come
to us and do such things are dead."
Richard didn't know if the antidote was supposed to make him feel
better, but if it was, it hadn't yet done its work. As they crept through
the pitch-black fields, his chest hurt with every breath he took. He paused
and closed his eyes briefly against the pain of the headache caused by his
gift. He wanted nothing more than to lie down, but there was no time for
that. Everyone started out once more when he did, quietly making their way
through the fields outside of Witherton.
It felt good, at least, to have his sword back, even if he dreaded the
thought of having to draw it for fear of finding its magic was no longer
there for him. Once they recovered the other two bottles of the antidote and
he was rid of the poison, then maybe they could make it back to Nicci so
that she could help him deal with his gift.
He tried not to worry if a sorceress could help a wizard once his gift
had gone out of control, as his had. Nicci had vast experience. As soon as
he reached her, she could help him. Even if she couldn't help him, he felt
confident that she would at least know what he had to do in order to get the
help he needed. After all, she was once a Sister of the Light; the purpose
of the Sisters of the Light had been to help those with the gift to learn to
control it.
"I think I see the outer wall," Kahlan said in a quiet voice.
"Yes, that's the place." Richard pointed. "There's the gate. See it?"
"I think so," she whispered back.
It was a dark night, with no moon. While the others were having
difficulty seeing much of anything as they made their way through the dark,
Richard was glad for the conditions. The starlight was enough for him to see
by, but he didn't think it was enough to give the soldiers any help in
seeing them.
As they crept closer, the sleeping house came into view through the
open gate. The torch still burned outside the door to the building where the
soldiers slept. Richard signaled everyone to gather around close. They all
crouched low. He grabbed the shoulder of Anson's shirt and pulled him up
closer yet, then did the same with Owen.
Both now carried battle-axes. Anson also carried the knife he'd earned.
The rest of the men carried the weapons they had helped finish making.
When Richard and Anson had returned to the forest clearing, Anson had
told the waiting men everything that had happened. When he said that he
killed the man called the weasel, Richard held his breath, not sure exactly
how the men would react to hearing that one of their own had actually killed
a man. There was a brief moment of astonished silence, and then spontaneous
joy at the accomplishment.
Every man wanted to shake Anson's hand to congratulate him, to tell him
how proud they were. At that moment, any lingering doubts Richard harbored
had vanished. He had allowed the men to celebrate briefly while he waited
for the night to darken, and then they had started making their way through
the fields.
This was the night that Witherton gained its freedom.
Richard looked around at all the dark shapes. "All right, now, remember
all the things we've told you. You must stay quiet and hold the gates steady
while Anson and Owen cut the rope where they hinge. Be careful not to let
the gates fall once the ropes are cut."
In the dim starlight Richard could just make out the men nodding to his
instructions. Richard carefully checked the sky, looking for any sign of
black-tipped races. He didn't see any. It had been a long time since they'd
seen any races.
It seemed that the trick of taking to the forests just before they
changed their expected route and being careful to stay out of sight from the
sky had worked. It was possible that they had succeeded in slipping out from
under Nicholas the Slide's surveillance. If they really had escaped his
observation, then he wouldn't know where to begin looking for them.
Richard briefly squeezed Kahlan's hand and then started for the opening
in the town wall. Cara crouched close at his other side. Tom was bringing up
the rear, along with Jennsen, making sure there were no surprises from
behind.
They had left Betty not only tied up, but confined to a makeshift pen
to be sure she didn't follow after them and give them away at the wrong
moment. The goat had been unusually distraught to be left behind, but with
lives at stake they couldn't risk Jennsen's goat causing trouble. She would
be happy enough after they returned.
When they reached the fields close to the town gates, Richard motioned
for everyone to get down and stay where they were. Along with Tom, Richard
moved up to the gates, taking cover in the shadow of the wall. There was a
soldier just inside the gate, pacing slowly in his lonely nighttime sentry
duty. He wasn't being very careful, or he would not be doing such duty in
the light of the torch.
As the soldier turned to walk away from them, Tom slipped up behind the
man and swiftly silenced him. As Tom dragged the dead man through the gates
to hide him in the darkness outside the wall, Richard moved in through the
gates, staying in the shadows and away from the torch burning outside the
sleeping house. The door to the sleeping house stood open, but no light or
sound came from inside. This late, the men were bound to be asleep.
He moved past the first long building to the second, and there came
upon another guard. Quickly, silently, Richard seized the man and cut his
throat, holding him tight as he struggled. When he finally went limp,
Richard laid him in the darkness at the head of the second sleeping house,
around the corner from the torchlight.
In the distance, the men had already swarmed over the gates, holding
them up while Anson and Owen worked quickly at cutting the ropes that acted
as hinges. In moments, both sections of gate were freed. Richard could hear
the soft grunts of effort as the heavy gates were manhandled around by the
two gangs of men.
Jennsen handed Richard his bow, the string already strung. She handed
him one of the special arrows, holding the rest at the ready for him. Kahlan
slipped up to the torch on the pole outside the first building and lit
several small torches, handing each of them off to the men. She kept one for
herself.
Richard nocked the arrow and then glanced around at the faces seeming
to float before him in the wavering torchlight. In answer to the unspoken
question, they all nodded that they were ready. He checked the men balancing
the two gates and saw their nod. The bow in one hand, with his fist holding
the arrow in place, Richard gave hand signals to the men, starting them
moving.
What had been a slow, careful approach from the woods into the town
suddenly transformed into a headlong rush.
Richard held the head of the arrow nocked in his bow in the flame of
the torch Kahlan held out for him. As soon as it caught, he ran to the open
door of the sleeping house, leaned into the darkness, and fired the arrow
toward the back.
As the blazing arrow flew the length of the building, it illuminated
row upon row of men sleeping on the bed of straw. The arrow landed at the
far end, spilling flame across the straw. A few heads lifted at the
confusing sight. Jennsen handed Richard another. He immediately drew string
to cheek and the arrow shot toward the middle of the interior.
As Richard pulled back from the doorway, two men with torches, dripping
flaming drops of pitch, heaved them just inside. They hissed as they flew
through the air, landing amid the sleeping men, bouncing and tumbling
through the straw, igniting a wall of flame.
In a matter of only a few heartbeats since the attack started, the
first sleeping house was set afire from one end to the other. The largest
blaze, by design, was the fire spread by the pitch-laden torches, at the end
of the building nearest the door. Confused cries came from inside, muted by
the thick walls. The sleeping soldiers scrambled to their feet.
Richard checked that the men with the heavy gates were coming; then he
ran around the sleeping house to the second building. Jennsen, following
close behind, handed him an arrow, the flames around its head wrapped in
oil-soaked cloth making a whooshing sound as she ran.
One of his men pulled the torch from the stand outside the building
where the guard Richard killed had been patrolling. Richard leaned in the
doorway only to see a big man charging at him out of the dark interior.
Richard pressed his back against the doorjamb and kicked the man squarely in
the chest, driving him back.
Richard drew the bowstring back and shot the flaming arrow off into the
interior. As it lit the interior in its flight through the building, he
could see that some of the men had been awakened and were getting up.
Turning to take the second flaming arrow from Jennsen, he saw smoke pouring
up from the first building. As soon as he drew string to cheek and loosed
the second arrow, he leaned away and men heaved the torches in.
One torch fell back out of the doorway. It had bounced off the chest of
a man rushing for the doorway to see what was happening. The pitch from the
torch caught his greasy beard afire. He let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Richard kicked him back inside. In an instant, men by the dozens were racing
for the door, not only to escape the burning building, but to meet the
attack. Richard saw the flash of weapons being drawn.
He sprang back from the doorway as the men carrying the heavy section
of gate rushed in. They turned the gate sideways and rammed it in under the
eaves, but before they could bring the bottom down to wedge it against the
ground, the weight of bellowing men inside crashed into the section of gate
and drove it back. The men carrying it fell back, the weight knocking them
from their feet, the gate landing atop them.
Suddenly, men were pouring from the doorway. Richard's men were ready
and fell on them, driving the wooden weapons into their soft underbellies
and snapping the handles off as man after man spilled out of the doorway.
Standing to the side of the door, others used their maces to bash in the
skulls of soldiers who emerged. When one soldier came out with his sword
raised, the man to the side clubbed his arm as another rushed in and drove a
wooden stake in up under his ribs. The more men who fell at the doorway, the
more those trying to get out were slowed and could be dispatched.
The soldiers were so stunned to see these people fighting that in some
cases they fought back only ineffectually. As a soldier leaped over the
bodies in the doorway and lifted a sword, a man jumped on his back and
seized his arm while another stabbed him. Another, crying orders, charged
Jennsen, only to have the bolt of a crossbow fired into his face. A few
soldiers escaped the burning building and managed to slip past Richard's men
only to meet Cara's Agiel. Their screams, worse than the cries of men on
fire, briefly brought the gaze of every man, from both sides of the battle.
Fallen knives and swords were scooped up by the men of the town and
turned on the men from the Imperial Order. Richard fired an arrow into the
center of the chest of a man emerging from the smoke that rolled out of the
doorway. As he was falling, a second arrow felled the man behind him. As
more men rushed out, they fell over those piled around the doorway and were
hacked to death with commandeered axes or stabbed with confiscated swords.
Since they could emerge only one at a time, the soldiers couldn't mount a
coordinated attack, but those waiting could.
As Richard's men fought back those struggling to get out of the doorway
of the burning building, other men rushed to help lift the gate so those
under it could get up and get control of it. Once the gate was lifted, the
men swung it around and, with a cry of joint effort, ran with it toward the
building. They drove the top up under the eaves, first, but when they
brought the bottom edge down, the bodies piled in the doorway prevented them
from getting the bottom down so they could wedge it in place.
Richard called out orders. Some of his men rushed in and seized an arm
or a leg of a dead man and dragged the body aside so the others could
finally bring the bottom of the gate down against the building to close off
the opening.
One man from inside squeezed through just before they had the gate in
place. The weight of the door pinned him against the building. Owen leaned
in and with a sword he'd picked up decisively stabbed the man through the
throat.
As men inside pounded at the gate covering the doorway and threw their
weight against it, men on the outside piled around to push it down and hold
it in place. Other men fell to their knees and drove stakes into the ground
to lock the gate section in place, trapping the soldiers inside.Behind,
streamers of flame leaked out from under the eaves of the first building and
leaped up into the night sky. The roof of the building ignited all at once,
explosively engulfing the entire sleeping house in sparks and flames.
Screams of men being burned alive ripped the night.
The waves of heat coming off the massive fire as the first building was
consumed by the flames began to carry the heavy aroma of cooking meat. It
reminded Richard that, for the killing he did, his gift demanded the balance
of not eating meat. After all the killing of this night, since his gift was
already spinning out of control, he would have to be even more careful to
avoid eating any meat.
His head was already hurting so much that he was having trouble
focusing his vision; he couldn't afford to do anything that would further
unbalance his gift. If he was not careful, the poison wouldn't get the
chance to be the first to kill him.
Heavy black smoke billowed out from around the edges of the gate
covering the doorway of the second sleeping house. Screams and pleas came
from inside. The men of the town moved back, watching, as smoke began
rolling up from under its eaves. The battle seemed to have ended as quickly
as it had started.
No one spoke as they stood in the harsh glare from the roaring fires.
Flames ate through the second building. With a loud whoosh it was engulfed
in fire.
The heat drove everyone back away from the two sleeping houses. As they
moved back from the burning buildings, they encountered the rest of the
people of the town, all gathered in the shadows, watching in stunned
silence.
One of the older men took a step forward. "Speaker Owen, what is this?
You have committed violence?"
Owen stepped away from the men he was with to stand before the people
of his town. He held an arm back, pointing toward Richard.
"This is Lord Rahl, of the D'Haran Empire. I went in search of him to
help us be free. We have much to tell you, but for now you must know that
tonight, for the first time in many seasons, our town is free.
"Yes, we have helped Lord Rahl to kill the evil men who have terrorized
us. We have avenged the deaths of our loved ones. We will no longer be
victims. We will be free!"
Standing silently, the people seemed able only to stare at him. Many
looked confused. Some looked quietly jubilant, but most just looked stunned.
The boy, Bernie, ran up to Anson, peering up in astonishment. "An-son,
you and our other people have freed us? Truly?"
"Yes." He laid a hand on Bernie's shoulder. "Our town is now free."
"Thank you." He broke into a grin as he turned back to the town's
people. "We are free of the murderers!"
A sudden, spontaneous cheer rose into the night, drowning out the sound
of the crackling flames. The people rushed in around men they had not seen
for months, touching them, hugging them, all asking questions of the men.
Richard took Kahlan's hand as he stepped back out of the way, joining
Cara, Jennsen, and Tom. These people who were so against violence, who lived
their whole life avoiding the truth of what their beliefs caused, were now
basking in the tearful joy of what it really meant to be freed from terror
and violence.
People slowly left their men to come and look at Richard and those
standing with him. He and Kahlan smiled at their obvious joy. They gathered
in close before him, smiling, staring, as if Richard and those with him were
some strange creatures from afar.
Bernie had attached himself to Anson's arm. Others had the rest of the
men firmly embraced. One by one, though, the men started pulling away so
that they could stand behind Richard and Kahlan.
"We are so happy that you are home, now," people were telling the men.
"We have you back, at last."
"Now we are all together again," Bernie said.
"We can't stay," Anson told him.
Everyone in the crowd fell silent.
Bernie, like many of the others, looked heartbroken. "What?"
Buzzing, worried whispers spread through the crowd. Everyone was shaken
by the news that the men were not home to stay.
Owen lifted a hand so they would listen. When they went silent, he
explained.
"The people of Bandakar are still under the cruel power of the men from
the Order. Just as you have become free tonight, so must the rest of the
people of Bandakar be free.
"Lord Rahl and his wife, the Mother Confessor, as well as his friend
and protector Cara, his sister Jennsen, and Tom, another friend and
protector, have all agreed to help us. They cannot do it alone. We must be
part of it, for this is our land, but more importantly, our people, our
loved ones."
"Owen, you must not engage in violence," an older man said. In view of
their sudden freedom, it was not an emphatic statement. It seemed to be an
objection more out of obligation than anything else. "You have begun a cycle
of violence. Such a thing is wrong."
"We will speak with you before we go, so that you might come to
understand, as we have, why we must do this to be truly free of violence and
brutality. Lord Rahl has shown us that a cycle of violence is not the result
of fighting back for your own life, but is the result of a shrinking back
from doing what is necessary to crush those who would kill you. If you do as
you must in duty to yourself and your loved ones, then you will eradicate
the enemy so completely that they can no longer do you any harm. Then, there
is no cycle of violence, but an end to violence. Then, and only then, will
true peace and freedom take root."
"Such actions can never accomplish anything but to start violence," an
old man objected.
"Look around," Anson said. "The violence has not begun tonight, but
ended. Violence has been crushed, as it should be, by crushing evil men who
bring it upon us."
People nodded to one another, the heady relief of being suddenly freed
from the grip of the terror brought by the soldiers of the Imperial Order
plainly overcoming their objections. Joy had taken over from fear. The
reality of having their lives returned had opened their eyes.
"But you must understand, as we have come to understand," Owen said,
"that nothing can ever again be the way it once was. Those ways are in the
past."
Richard noticed that the men weren't slouching anymore. They stood with
their heads held high.
"We have chosen to live," Owen told his people. "In so doing, we have
found true freedom."
"I think we all have," the old man in the crowd said.
Zedd frowned with the effort of concentrating on what it was Sister
Tahirah had placed on the table before him. He looked up at her, at the way
her scowl pinched in around her humped nose.
"Well?" she demanded.
Zedd looked down, squinting at the thing before him. It looked like a
leather-covered ball painted with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines all
around it.
What was it about it that seemed so familiar, yet so distant?
He blinked, trying to better focus his eyes. His neck ached something
fierce. A father, hearing his young son in the next tent screaming in
appalling agony, had grabbed Zedd by the hair and yanked him away from other
parents who, pulling and pawing at him, made desperate demands of their own.
Because of the torn muscles in his neck, it was painful to hold up his head.
Compared to the torture he'd heard, though, it was nothing.
The dim interior of the tent, lit by several lamps hanging from poles,
felt as if it were detached from the ground and swirling around him. The
foul place stank. The heat and humidity only made the smell, and the
spinning, worse. Zedd felt as if he might pass out.
It had been so long since he'd slept that he couldn't even remember the
last time he had actually lain down. The only sleep he got was when he fell
asleep in the chair while Sister Tahirah was seeing to another object being
unloaded from the wagons, or when she went to bed and the next Sister hadn't
yet arrived to take the next stint in their laborious cataloging of the
items brought from the Keep. The catnaps he got were rarely longer than a
few precious minutes at a time. The guards had orders not to allow him or
Adie to lie down.
At least the screams of the children had ended. At least, as long as he
cooperated, those cries of pain had stopped. At least, as long as he went
along, the parents had hope.
A violent crack of pain suddenly hammered the side of his head,
knocking him back. The chair toppled over, spilling him to the ground. With
his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't do anything to break the fall
and he hit hard. Zedd's ears rang, not only from the fall, but with the
aftermath of the blow of the Sister's power delivered through the collar
around his neck.
He hated that wicked instrument of control. The Sisters were not shy
about exercising that control. Because the collar locked him away from the
use of his own gift, he could not use his ability to defend himself.
Instead, they used his power against him.
It took little or no provocation to send one of the Sisters into a fit
of violence. Many of these women had once been kindly people devoting their
lives to helping others. Jagang had enslaved them to a different cause. Now
they did his bidding. Though they might have once been gentle, they were
now, he knew, trying to keep one step ahead of the discipline Jagang meted
out to them. That discipline could be excruciating beyond endurance. The
Sisters were expected to get results; Jagang would not be interested in the
excuse that Zedd was being difficult.
Zedd saw that Adie, too, had been knocked to the ground. Any punishment
he received, she, too, endured. He felt more agony for her than for himself.
Soldiers standing to the side moved in to right the chair and lift Zedd
into it. With his arms bound behind his back, he couldn't get up by himself.
They sat him down hard enough to drive a grunt from his lungs.
"Well?" Sister Tahirah demanded. "What is it?"
Zedd once again leaned in, staring down at the round object sitting by
itself in the center of the table. The faint blue and pink lines zigzagging
all around it stirred deep feelings. He thought he should know this thing.
"It's . . . it's . . ."
"It's what!" Sister Tahirah slammed the book against the edge of the
table, causing the round object to bounce up and roll a few inches before it
came to a stop closer to Zedd. She tucked the book under one arm as she
leaned with the other on the table. She bent down toward him.
"What is it? What does it do?"
"I... I can't remember."
"Would you like me to bring in some children," the Sister said in the
soft, sweet tone of a very bitter threat, "and show you their little faces
before they are taken to the tent next to us to be tortured?"
"I'm so tired," he said. "I'm trying to remember, but I'm so tired."
"Maybe while the children are screaming you would like to explain to
their parents that you are tired and just can't quite seem to remember."
Children. Parents.
Zedd suddenly remembered what the object was. Painful memories welled
up. He felt a tear run down his cheek.
"Dear spirits," he whispered. "Where did you find this?"
"What is it?"
"Where did you find it?" Zedd repeated.
Huffing impatiently, the Sister straightened. She opened the book and
made a noisy show of turning heatedly through the pages. Finally, she
stopped and tapped a finger in the open book.
"It says here that it was found hidden in an open recess in the back of
a black six-drawer chest in a corridor. There was a tapestry of three
prancing white horses hanging above the chest."
She lowered the book. "Now, what is it?"
Zedd swallowed. "A ball."
The Sister glared. "I know it's a ball, you old fool. What is it for?
What does it do? What is its purpose?"
Staring at the ball no bigger than his fist, Zedd remembered. "It's a
ball for children to play with. Its purpose is to bring them pleasure."
He remembered this ball, brightly colored back then, frequently
bouncing down the halls of the Wizard's Keep, his daughter giggling and
chasing after it. He had given it to her for doing well in her studies.
Sometimes she would roll it down the halls, urging it along with a switch,
as if she were walking a pet. Her favorite thing to do was to bounce it on
the floor so that it would come up against a wall, after which it would
bounce to another wall at an intersection of stone hallways. In that way she
made it bounce around a corner. She would watch which hall it went down,
left or right, then chase after it.
One day she came to him in tears. He asked her to tell him her
troubles. She crawled up in his lap and told him that her ball had gone
somewhere and gotten itself lost. She wanted him to get it unlost. Zedd told
her that if she looked, she would likely find it. She spent days
despondently wandering the halls of the Keep, searching for it. She couldn't
find it.
Finally, starting out one morning at sunrise, Zedd made the long walk
down to the city of Aydindril, to the market on Stentor Street. That was
where he had first come across a stand where they sold such toys and found
the ball with the zigzagged lines. There he bought her another one--not just
like it, but instead one with pink and green stars. He deliberately chose a
ball unlike the one she'd lost because he didn't want her to think that
wishes could be miraculously fulfilled, but he did want her to know that
there were solutions that could solve problems.
He remembered his daughter hugging his legs, thanking him for the new
ball, telling him that he was the best father in all the world and that she
would be ever so much more careful with the new ball and never lose it. He
had smiled as he watched her put a little hand to her heart and recite a
little-girl oath she had invented on the spot.
She treasured the ball with the pink and green stars. Since it was
small, it was one of the few things she had been able to take with her,
after she was grown, when she and Zedd ran away to Westland, after Darken
Rahl had raped her.
When Richard had been young, he had played with that ball. Zedd
remembered the smile on his daughter's face as she watched her own child
play with that precious ball. Zedd could see in her beautiful eyes the
memories of her own childhood as she watched Richard play. She had kept that
ball her whole life, kept it until she died.
This ball before him was the very same one his daughter had lost. It
must have bounced up behind the chest and fallen into a recess in the back,
where it had been for all those long years.
Zedd leaned forward, resting his forehead on the dusty ball surrounded
with faded blue and pink zigzagged lines, the ball which her little fingers
had once held, and wept.
Sister Tahirah seized a fistful of his hair and pulled him upright. "I
don't believe you're telling me the truth. It's an object of magic. I want
to know what it is and what it does." Holding his head back, she glared into
his eyes. "You know that I will not hesitate to do what is necessary to make
you cooperate. His Excellency accepts no excuses for failure."
Zedd stared up at her, blinking away his tears. "It's a ball, a toy.
That's all it is."
With a sneer, she released him. "The great and powerful Wizard
Zorander." She shook her head. "To think that we once feared you. You are a
pathetic old man, your courage crushed by nothing more than the cry of a
child." She sighed. "I must say, your reputation far exceeds the reality of
your mettle."
The Sister scooped up the ball, turning it in her fingers as she
inspected it. She huffed with disgust and tossed it aside, as if it were
worthless. Zedd watched the ball bounce and roll across the ground, coming
to rest at the side of the tent, against the bench where Adie sat. He looked
up into her completely white eyes to see her watching him. Zedd turned away,
waiting while the Sister made notes in her book.
"All right," she finally said, "let's go have a look at what they've
unloaded in the next tent."
The soldiers lifted him from the chair before he had a chance to try to
do it himself. His shoulders ached from his wrists being bound behind his
back and from being lifted by his arms. Adie, too, was lifted to her feet.
The book snapped closed. Sister Tahirah's wiry gray hair whipped around as
she turned and led them out of the tent.
Because the Sisters knew how dangerous items of magic from the Wizard's
Keep could be, especially if the wrong combination of magic were to
accidentally be allowed to combine or touch, they were cautious enough to
bring the items, one at a time, out of each individual, protected, shielded
crate in the wagons. Zedd knew that there were things in the Keep that, by
themselves, were not dangerous, but became so in the presence of other
things that, by themselves, were also not dangerous. Sometimes it was only
the combination of specific items that created a desired outcome.
The Sisters had vast experience in the most esoteric things of magic
and so they at least understood the principles involved. They treated the
cargo with the care due such potentially hazardous goods. Once each object
was uncrated, they placed it, by itself, in a tent to await examination.
They took Zedd and Adie from tent to tent so that Zedd could identify each
treasure, tell them what it was, explain how it worked.
They had been at it for days--how many, Zedd couldn't remember. Despite
his best efforts, the endless days and nights had all begun to melt together
in his mind.
Zedd did all he could to stall, but there was only so much he could do.
These women knew magic. They would not easily be fooled by any invented
explanation. They had made very clear the consequences of any such
deception.
And, Zedd didn't know how much they knew. At times they feigned
ignorance of something which they actually understood quite well, just to
see if he was telling the truth.
Fortunately, as of yet, they had uncovered nothing that was
extravagantly dangerous. Most of the items from the crates were
simple-looking objects, but were actually for a narrowly focused purpose--a
pole that could remotely judge the depth of water in a well, an iron
decoration shaped like a fan of leaves that prevented words from carrying
beyond an open door where it was placed, a large looking glass that revealed
when a person entered another room. While possibly useful to Emperor Jagang,
such items were not all that valuable or dangerous; they were not going to
help him to conquer and rule the world.
What dangerous things the Sisters had uncrated and shown him were not
really anything that a Sister couldn't easily produce with a spell of her
own. The most dangerous item had been a constructed spell held within an
ornate vase that, under specific conditions, such as when the vase was
filled with water, created a temperature inversion that produced a blast of
flame. Zedd was not betraying his cause or putting innocent lives at risk by
revealing how the spell worked; any Sister worth her salt could reproduce
the same effect. The purpose of the spell was protective; had it touched
other stolen items, which, because they were stolen, was a reversal of
intended ownership that such a spell recognized, it would have ignited and
destroyed those items, keeping them from covetous hands.
None of the things so far discovered would do Jagang any real good.
There were things in the Keep, though, that could cause him harm. There were
spells there, such as the constructed spell in the vase, that recognized the
nature of the person invoking their magic. Opened by the right person, such
as Zedd, those things would do nothing, but, opened by a thief, they would
create calamity.
The Keep had thousands of rooms. The looting of it had netted the
Imperial Order a caravan of cargo wagons, but even that much hardly
scratched the surface of the contents of the Keep.
So far, Zedd had not seen any plums.
He didn't know if he would live to see any. The ride in the box after
his capture had been brutal. He was still not recovered from the injuries
inflicted after meeting Jagang. Guards let the parents do what they would to
convince Zedd and Adie to give in, but they wouldn't allow the parents to
get so carried away that they killed such prize prisoners. The parents had
known that they weren't to kill them, but in the heat of such raw passion,
Zedd knew that such orders were easy to forget. Zedd yearned for them to
kill him and end it. The emperor, though, needed them alive, so the guards
stood careful watch.
After the first few horrifying hours of listening to children being
subjected to crippling torture, of being among their parents, who
understandably demanded, quite forcefully, that he cooperate and tell the
emperor what he wanted to know, Zedd had given in--not for the sake of the
parents so much as to stop those brutal men from what they were doing to the
children.
He had figured that he had nothing to lose, really, by giving in. It
stopped the torture of the children for the time being. The Keep was vast;
the things they brought were only a tiny portion of them. Zedd reasoned that
the caravan of wagons probably didn't hold anything of any real value to
Jagang. It would take quite a while to catalog everything--it could be weeks
more before they reached the last item. There was no purpose in allowing
children to endure torture when there might not be anything useful for Zedd
to betray to Jagang.
Once, when they were alone while the Sister had gone to check on the
preparations in the next tent, Adie had asked what he would do if they
presented him with something that would materially help Jagang win. Zedd
hadn't had a chance to answer; the soldiers had come in then and taken the
two of them to the Sister in the next tent.
He was hoping to drag out the process for as long as possible. He
hadn't counted on how they would keep at it day and night.
It sometimes took quite a while for the Sisters to get out the next
treasure and have it ready. They were understandably cautious and took no
chances. Those strange men without any trace of the gift who helped them
might not be harmed if any errant item of magic were to accidentally be set
in motion, but everyone else certainly was vulnerable. Careful as they were,
there were enough people working at the preparations that Zedd and Adie were
not allowed to sleep for long before they were taken off to unravel the next
puzzle for them.
As he and Adie were dragged through the dark camp to the next tent,
Zedd's legs would hardly hold him. Seeing his daughter's long-lost ball had
sapped much of his remaining strength. He had never felt so old, so feeble.
He feared that his will to go on was flagging.
He didn't know how much longer he could keep his sanity.
He wasn't at all sure that he actually still possessed it. The world
seemed to have turned into a crazy place. At times the whole thing seemed
dreamlike. What he knew and what he didn't know sometimes seemed to have all
twisted together into a knot of confusion.
As he was marched through the dark camp, through the humid heat, he
began to imagine that he saw things--mostly people--from his past. He began
to doubt that he really had seen that ball. He wondered if, like some of the
other things he was seeing, he had imagined it as well. Could it maybe have
been a simple ball, and he only thought that it was the one his daughter had
lost? Had he imagined the zigzagged colors around it? He was beginning to
question himself over every little thing.
Looking up at all the people in the crowded encampment, he thought he
saw his long-dead wife, Erilyn, in the faces of the women held nearby under
guard. They were mothers, their worst nightmares ready to come to life if
Zedd didn't cooperate. His gaze passed over children clutching their
mother's skirts, or their father's legs. They looked at him. his wavy white
hair in disarray, probably thinking he was some crazy man. Maybe he was.
The torches lit the sprawling camp with a kind of flickering light that
made everything seem imaginary. The campfires, spread as far as he could
see, looked like a star field lying across the ground, as if the world had
turned upside down.
"Wait," the Sister said to the guards.
Zedd was jerked to a halt as the Sister ducked inside the tent. Adie
cried out as the man holding her wrenched her arm in the act of stopping
her.
Zedd swayed on his feet, wondering if he might pass out. The whole
nighttime camp wavered in his vision.
As he looked at one of the girls held captive across the way, he
stared, astonished, thinking he recognized her. Zedd looked up at the
emperor's elite guard in the distance holding the child. Zedd blinked his
blurred vision. The guard, in leather and mail armor, with a belt full of
weapons, looked like a man Zedd used to know. Zedd turned away at the
memory, only to see a Sister, making her way among the tents not far away,
who also looked like someone else he knew. He looked around at soldiers
going about their business. Elite soldiers guarding the emperor's compound
looked like men he thought he remembered.
Zedd truly was terrified, then. He was sure that he was losing his
mind. He couldn't possibly be seeing the people he thought he saw.
His mind was all he had. He didn't want to be some babbling old man
sitting by the side of a road begging.
He knew that people sometimes became irrational--lost their mind-- when
they got old or were pressed past their endurance. He had known people who
had snapped, who had gone insane, and saw things that weren't really there.
That's what he was doing. He was having visions of people from his past who
weren't really there. That was a sure sign of insanity--seeing your past
come to life, thinking you were back with long-lost loved ones.
His mind was the most important thing he had.
Now he was losing that, too.
He was losing his sanity.
Nicholas heard an annoying noise back in another place.
A disturbance of some sort, back where his body waited.
He ignored it, watching the streets, watching the buildings go by. The
sun had just set. People, wary people, moved past. Color. Sound. Activity.
It was a dingy place, with buildings crowded close. Watch, watch.
Alleyways were dark and narrow. Strangers stared. The street smelled. None
of the buildings were more than two stories; he was sure of it. Most were
not even that.
Again, he heard the noise back where his body waited. It was forceful,
calling his attention.
He ignored the thump, thump, thump back somewhere else as he watched,
trying to see where they were going. What's this? Watch, watch, watch. He
thought he knew, but he wasn't positive. Look, look. He wanted to be sure.
He wanted to watch.
He so enjoyed watching.
More noise. Obnoxious, demanding, thumping noise.
Nicholas felt his body around him as he slammed back to where it
waited, sitting cross-legged on the wooden floor. He opened his eyes,
blinking, trying to see in the dim room. Slivers of dusk leaking in around
the edges of the closed shutters lent only somber light to the room.
He stood, wavering on his feet for a moment, not yet used to the
strange feeling of being back in his own body. He started walking across the
room, looking down, watching as he lifted each foot out ahead, shifted his
weight with every step. He had been gone so much lately, day and night, that
he was not used to having to do such things on his own. He had been so often
in another place, another body, that he had difficulty adjusting to his own.
Someone was banging on the door, yelling for him to open it. Nicholas
was furious at the uninvited caller, at such a rude intrusion.
With wobbly gait, he made his way to the door. It felt so confining
being back in his own body. It moved in such an odd manner. He rolled his
shoulders, resisting the urge to bend forward. He pulled and stretched his
neck one way, then the other.
It was bothersome to have to move himself about, to use his own
muscles, to feel himself breathe, to see, hear, smell, feel with his own
senses.
The door was barred by a heavy bolt to prevent unwelcome callers from
entering while he was off to other places. It wouldn't do to have someone
messing with his body while he wasn't there using it himself. Wouldn't do at
all.
Someone pounding on the other side of the door bellowed his name and
demanded to be let in. Nicholas lifted the heavy bolt and heaved it over. He
threw open the thick door.
A young soldier stood just outside in the hall. A common, grubby
soldier. A nobody.
Nicholas stared in stunned fury at the lowly man who would just walk up
the stairs to the room everyone knew was off-limits and pound on the
forbidden door. Where was Najari's flat, crooked nose when he needed it? Why
wasn't someone guarding the door?
A broken bone jutted from the back of the bloody fist the man had been
hammering against the door.
Nicholas craned his neck, peering past the soldier out into the dimly
lit hall, and saw the bodies of guards sprawled in pools of blood.
Nicholas ran his fingernails back through his hair, shivering with
delight at the silken smooth feel of oils gliding against his palm. He
rolled his shoulders with the pleasure of the sensation.
Opening his eyes, he fixed his gaze on the wide-eyed, common soldier
whom he was about to kill. The man was dressed like many of the Imperial
Order soldiers, at least the better-outfitted soldiers, with leather chest
armor, a sleeve of protective mail on his right arm, and a number of leather
straps and belts holding a variety of weapons from a short sword to a mace
with a spiked metal head to knives. Despite how deadly all his gear
appeared, the expression on his face was one of startled terror.
Nicholas puzzled for a moment at what such a meaningless man could
possibly have to say that would be worth his life.
"What is it, you insipid fool?"
The man lifted an arm, then the hand, then a single finger in a manner
that reminded Nicholas of nothing so much as a puppet having its strings
pulled. The finger tipped to one side, then the other, then back again, the
way someone might waggle a finger in admonition.
"Ah, ah, ah." The finger twitched side to side again. "Be polite. Be
awfully polite."
The soldier, his eyes wide, seemed surprised by his own haughty words.
The voice sounded too deep--too mature--to belong to this young man.
The voice, in fact, sounded dangerous in the extreme.
"What is this?" Nicholas frowned at the soldier. "What's this about?"
The man started into the room, his legs moving in a most peculiar,
stilted manner. In some ways it reminded Nicholas of how it must look when
he used his own legs after not being in his body for a long spell. He
stepped aside as the man walked woodenly into the center of the dim room and
turned. Blood dripped from the hand that had been pounding against the door,
but the man, his eyes still wide with fear, seemed not to notice what had to
be painful injuries.
His voice, though, came out anything but afraid. "Where are they,
Nicholas?"
Nicholas approached the man and cocked his head. "They?"
"You promised them to me, Nicholas. I don't like it when people don't
keep their word. Where are they?"
Nicholas drew his brow down even farther, leaned in even more. "Who?"
"Richard Rahl and the Mother Confessor!" the soldier bellowed in
unrestrained rage.
Nicholas backed away a few paces. He understood, now. He had heard the
stories, heard that the man could do such things. Now he was seeing it for
himself.
This was Emperor Jagang, the dream walker himself.
"Remarkable," Nicholas drawled. He approached the soldier who was not a
soldier and tapped a finger against the side of the man's head. "That you in
there, Your Excellency?" He tapped the man's temple again. "That's you,
isn't it, Excellency."
"Where are they, Nicholas?" It was as dangerous-sounding a question as
Nicholas had ever heard.
"I told you that you would have them, and you shall."
"I think you're lying to me, Nicholas," the voice growled. "I don't
think you have them, as you promised you would."
Nicholas flipped a hand dismissively as he strolled off a few paces.
"Oh, foo. I have them by a string."
"I think otherwise. I have reason to believe that they aren't down here
at all. I have reason to believe that the Mother Confessor herself is far to
the north . .. with her army."
Nicholas frowned as he approached the man, leaning in close, peering
into the eyes. "Do you completely lose your senses when you go cavorting
into another man's mind like that?"
"Are you saying it isn't so?"
Nicholas was losing patience. "I was just watching them when you barged
in here to pester me. They were both there--Lord Rahl and the Mother
Confessor."
"Are you sure?" came the deep gravelly voice out of the young soldier's
mouth.
Nicholas planted his fists on his hips. "Are you questioning me? How
dare you! I am Nicholas the Slide. I will not be questioned by anyone!"
The soldier took an aggressive step forward.
Nicholas held his ground and lifted a finger in warning. "If you want
them, then you had better be awfully careful."
The soldier watched with wide eyes, but Nicholas could see more in
those eyes: menace.
"Talk, then, before I lose my patience."
Nicholas screwed his mouth up in annoyance. "Whoever told you that they
were to the north, that the Mother Confessor is with their army, either
doesn't know what they're talking about or is lying to you. I've kept a
careful eye on them."
"But have you seen them lately?"
The room was growing dark. Nicholas cast a hand toward the table,
sending a small spark of his gift into three candles there, setting their
wicks to flame.
"I told you, I was just watching them. They are in a city not far from
here. Soon, they will be coming here, to me, and then I will have them. You
don't have long to wait."
"What makes you think they're coming to you?"
"I know everything they do." Nicholas held his arms aloft, his black
robes slipping up to his elbows, gesturing expansively as he walked around
the man, speaking of what he alone knew. "I watch them. I have seen them
lying together at night, the Mother Confessor tenderly holding her husband
in her arms, holding his head to her shoulder, comforting his terrible pain.
It's quite touching, actually."
"His pain?"
"Yes, his pain. They are in Northwick right now, a city not far to the
north of here. When they are finished there, if they live through their
visit, then they will be coming here, to me."
Jagang in the soldier looked around, taking in the freshly dead bodies
lying against the wall. His attention returned to Nicholas.
"I asked, what makes you think so?"
Nicholas looked over his shoulder and lifted an eyebrow at the emperor.
"Well, you see, these fool people here--the pillars of Creation who so
fascinate you--have poisoned the poor Lord Rahl. They did it to try to
insure his help in getting rid of us."
"Poisoned him? Are you sure?"
Nicholas smiled at the note of interest he detected in the emperor's
voice. "Oh, yes, quite sure. The poor man is in a great deal of pain. He
needs an antidote."
"Then he will do what he must to get such an antidote. Richard Rahl is
a surprisingly resourceful man."
Nicholas leaned his backside against the table and folded his arms. "He
may be resourceful, but he's now in a great deal of trouble. You see, he
needs two more doses of the antidote. One of them is in North-wick. That's
why he went there."
"You would be surprised at what that man can accomplish." It would have
been impossible to miss the bristling anger in the emperor's voice. "You
would be a fool to underestimate him, Nicholas."
"Oh, but I never underestimate anyone, Excellency." Nicholas smiled
meaningfully at the emperor watching him through another man's eyes. "You
see, I'm reasonably sure that Richard Rahl will retrieve the antidote in
Northwick. In fact, I am counting on it. We shall see. I was watching him as
you came in, watching what would happen. You spoiled it.
"But even if he obtains the antidote in Northwick, he will still need
to get the last dose. The antidote in Northwick alone will not spare his
life."
"Where's this other dose of his antidote?"
Nicholas reached in a pocket and showed the emperor the square-sided
bottle, along with a satisfied smile.
"I have it."
The man with an emperor inside him smiled. "He may come to take it from
you, Nicholas. But, more likely, he will have someone else make him more of
the antidote so that he won't even have to bother coming here."
"Oh, I don't think so. You see, Excellency, I am quite thorough in my
work. This poison that Lord Rahl took is complex, but not nearly as complex
as t