Naked Empire (36 page)

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.