Stone of Tears (73 page)

He shrugged. “Why, to assist and facilitate the joining of all people under the rule of common law.”

“Who’s law?”

“The law of the victors.” He smiled. “That would be us. The Imperial Order.”

“You have responsibilities as a wizard. Those responsibilities are to serve, not to rule. You will report at once to Aydindril, to take your place in that service, or you will answer to me.”

“You?” he said with a derisive sneer. “You demand good and decent men whimper and snivel before you, and at the same time you blindly let banelings have a free run of the land.”

“Banelings?” She glowered at Riggs. “I suppose you would be foolish enough to seek council from the Blood of the Fold.”

“They have already joined with us,” General Riggs said, offhandedly. “Our cause is theirs, and theirs ours. They know how to expunge those who would serve the Keeper and thus our enemies. We will cleanse the land of all who serve the Keeper. Goodness must triumph.”

“You mean your cause. It is you, who would rule.”

“Are you blind, Confessor? I rule here, now, but this is not about me; it is about the future. I simply fill the post for now, furrow the field so it may produce. It is not I who is the focus.

“We offer everyone the chance to serve with us, and every man with me has taken that offer. Others have joined our troops in our battle. We are no longer D’Haran troops. They are no longer troops of their homeland. We are all the Imperial Order. Any of right mind can lead us. If I fall in our noble struggle, another will rise up to take my place, until all the lands are joined under united rule, and the Imperial Order can flower.”

Either the man was too drunk to know what he was saying, or he was mad. She glanced about at the dancing, drunken, singing men at camp fires all about. Mad as the Bantak. Mad as the Jocopo.

“General Riggs.” He had been muttering angrily under his breath, but stopped and looked up at her. “I am the Mother Confessor. Like it or not, I represent the Midlands. In the name of the Midlands I call upon you to to halt this war immediately and either return to D’Hara, or come to the Council with your grievances. You may petition to the Central Council with any dispute you have, and it will be heard, but you may not visit war upon my people. You will not like the consequence if you choose not to heed my orders.”

He sneered up at her. “We make no compromises. We will annihilate all who don’t join us. We fight to stop the killing, to stop the murdering, as the good spirits have called upon us to do. We fight for peace! Until we win peace, we will have war!”

She frowned. “Who told you this? Who told you that you must fight?”

He blinked at her. “It’s self evident, you stupid bitch!”

“You cannot possibly be so stupid as to think the good spirits tell you to wage war. The good spirits do not act in such overt ways.”

“Ah, well then, we have a disagreement. That is the purpose of war, is it not? To settle such matters? The good spirits know us to be in the right, else they would easily join against us. Our victory will prove they side with us or we could not win in our struggle. The Creator Himself wishes to see us triumph, and our victory will be proof of that.”

The man was a lunatic. She redirected her attention to the Keltish commander. “Karsh …”

“General Karsh.”

“You demean the rank, General. Why did you slaughter the people of Ebinissia?”

“Ebinissia was given the opportunity to join us, as will all be given the opportunity. Ebinissia chose to fight. We had to make an example of her heathen people, to show others what awaits them if they fail to join us in peace. It cost us nearly half our men, but it was a goal worth the cost. Even now, those lost are being replaced by others joining with us, and we will swell in rank to take in all the known lands.”

“This, you call leadership? Extortion and murder?”

General Karsh slammed his mug down on the table. His eyes were fire. “We visit upon them what they visit upon our people! They raid our farms, our border towns. They kill Keltans as if we were bugs to be stepped on!

“Yet we offered them peace. It is they who chose to shun our mercy. They were offered a chance at peace, a chance to join us; they chose war. In that way, they chose to aid us; they have made an example for others of the folly of fighting us.”

“And what have you done with Queen Cyrilla? Did you slaughter her, too, or is she back there in your whores’ tents?”

They all laughed. “She would be,” Riggs put in, “if we’d found her.” Kahlan almost sighed aloud with relief.

She looked back to Karsh, who was taking another swig. “What has Prince Fyren to say of this?”

“Fyren’s in Aydindril! I’m here!”

So, perhaps the Crown wasn’t a part of this. Perhaps this was little more that a band of murdering outlaws who fancied themselves as more.

Kahlan knew Prince Fyren, knew him to be a reasonable man. Of the Keltish diplomats assigned to Aydindril, he was the one who had done the most to bring Kelton forward into the alliance of the Midlands through the Central Council. He cajoled and persuaded his mother, the Queen, to go the route of peace rather than conflict. Prince Fyren was a gentleman, in every sense of the word.

“Besides being a murderer, General Karsh, you are also a traitor to your own land and crown. To your own Queen.”

He hammered his pewter mug down on the table. “I’m a patriot! A protector of my people!”

She leaned the slightest bit forward. “You are a treasonous bastard and an outlaw cutthroat without conscious. I leave to Prince Fyren the honor of condemning you to death. It will, of course, be a posthumous sentence.”

Karsh pounded his fist. “The good spirits know of your treachery against the people of the Midlands! This proves their words true! They have told us we cannot be free as long as you live! They have called upon us to kill all those like you! All those who blaspheme! The good spirits will not abandon us in our struggle. We shall defeat all who do the Keeper’s bidding.”

“No real officer,” she said, contemptuously, “would listen to the babbling of the Blood.”

The wizard had made an angry looking ball of liquid fire, and was slowly juggling it back and forth between his hands while he watched her. The flames spit and hissed, dropping little sparks. General Riggs belched and then put his fists on the table as he leaned toward her.

“Enough talking. Get down here you little wench, so we can start the party. Us brave freedom fighters need a little fun.”

General Karsh at last smiled. “And then tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, you will be beheaded. Our men, our people, will rejoice at your death. They will exult in our triumph over the Mother Confessor, the symbol of oppression by magic.” His smile left as he turned red faced once more. “The people must see your punishment to know that good can prevail! To have hope! When we have your head, our people can rejoice!”

“Rejoice that all you brave freedom fighters are strong enough to kill a single woman?”

“No,” General Riggs said. He appeared for the first time sober as he looked up at her. “You miss the true meaning of what we do. You fail to see its significance.”

His voice lowered, his tone softened. “It is a new age we enter, Confessor. An age that has no place for your old religions. The line of Confessors and their wizards are at an end.

“There was a time, three thousand years ago, when nearly everyone was born with the gift. Magic held sway over all things. That magic was used to vie for power. Wizards abused their power. In their greed, they killed one another. They killed others who had the gift, and so fewer lived to pass it on. Over time, those with the gift were culled from the race of men.

“Yet those left still contested for rule, and further thinned the ranks of those born with the gift. The magic, the other creatures of magic who were their charges, such as you, have been steadily stripped of their protection and fount of magic. Today there are almost none born with the gift. Magic itself is dying with them. They have had their chance to rule, just as did Darken Rahl with his magic, and they have failed. Their time, the time of wizards, is past.

“Their protection of the twilight beings is at an end, and so the age of magic is at an end. The time of man is upon us now, and there is no place in that world for the ancient, dying religion you call magic. It is time for man to take his place as inheritor of the world. The Imperial Order is upon the world, now, and if it were not them, it would be man by another name. It is time for man to rule, for magic to die.”

Kahlan felt a sudden hollowness. An unexpected tear ran down her cheek. A choking feeling of true panic clawed at her throat.

“Do you hear that, Slagle?” she whispered hoarsely. “You have magic. The ones you aid would put an end to you, too.”

He tossed the little ball of fire to his other hand, the light of its flames dancing across his grim face. “It is as it must be. Magic, chaste or foul, is the Keeper’s conduit to this world. When I have helped extinguish magic in all its forms, then I, too, must die. In that way, I will serve the people.”

Riggs gazed up to her, almost sorrowfully, as he went on.

“Our people must see the last living embodiment of that religion die. You are its symbol, the last creature of magic created by wizards. With your death, they will be filled with hope for the future, and be emboldened to extinguish all the remaining pockets of filth and perversion that is magic.

“We are the plowshare. Those lands now infested with magic will be freed of its taint, and can be resettled by pious people. Then, at last, we shall all be free of your dogmas which have no part in the glory of the future of man.”

He straightened, taking a drink from his mug. The harshness returned to his voice. “After we finish with you, then we will bring Galea to heel, and the rest the lands.” He slammed the mug down. “Until complete and total victory is ours, we demand war!”

Rage swelled in her, banishing the momentary sensation of loss and panic, swelled on behalf of all those beings, the twilight beings, who depended upon her for voice and protection.

She nodded slowly as she held the General’s gaze.

“In my capacity as Mother Confessor, the highest rank of authority in the Midlands, to whose mandate all must bow, I grant your wish.” She leaned forward and spoke in a hiss. “Let there be war. On my word and office, not one of you shall be granted quarter.”

Kahlan’s fist came up to the wizard. It was for him she had come.

Her chest heaved with wrath, and with terror at the madness of these men. She let the magic surge within her, demanding release, demanding this wizard’s death.

It was for him she had come. She must not fail. The blood rage screamed through her.

She called the lighting forth.

Nothing happened.

She froze for an instant in the panic of the failure of the magic. Then Riggs lunged for her leg.

Kahlan hauled back on the reins. The ferocious warhorse sprang into battle. He bellowed as he reared, kicking his front legs. Kahlan grasped his mane for dear life. A lashing hoof caught Riggs across the face, throwing him back. The thrashing hooves crashed down on the table, shattering it to splinters. Men in chairs toppled backwards. Nick’s front hooves crushed the head of one of the D’Haran officers, the leg of another.

The horse spun and kicked at the men. Kahlan gave him her heels, and he leapt into a gallop as the wizard was rising to his feet. Surprised men threw themselves out of the way. She took a quick glance over her shoulder to see the wizard throwing his hands out. A ball of wizard’s fire exploded to life before him, turning in the air, awaiting command. He threw his arms out again, sending the fire on its way toward her.

The warhorse leapt over fires and men, kicking up both snow and flaming firewood. His legs caught tent lines, yanking them down. Kahlan spotted what she wanted, what she wanted more than life itself, and maneuvered the horse for it.

She could hear the wail of the wizard’s fire coming for her. She could hear the screams of men unexpectedly caught up in it. She stole another glance to see the blue and yellow ball of flame tumbling through the tents and men, growing all the time, taking a course as drunken as the wizard. Wizard’s fire had to be guided, and in his state, the wizard was having difficulty controlling what he had wrought. Were he sober, she would be dead by now.

Dear spirits
, she prayed,
if I am to die, let me have time enough first to do what I must.

Kahlan reached her goal. As she galloped past, she yanked a lance from a snow bank and wheeled her horse. She dug her heels in and Nick leapt ahead at a full gallop.

The ball of fire wailed toward her, setting tents and men afire. It grew and tumbled as the distance closed.

The lance was unexpectedly heavy, made for men who had more muscle that she, and she had to carry it upright to save her strength. The warhorse didn’t flinch as he galloped, not at the noise, the confusion, the running men, or the wizard’s fire. She pulled to one side and then the other, Nick’s hooves digging into the packed snow. She dodged obstacles, weaving her way toward the wizard’s fire at full speed. Toward the wizard.

Slagle tried to change the course of the fire, to block her advance, each time she wove in her headlong rush. His reactions were slow, but as the distance closed, she knew he wouldn’t need to be fast to catch her up in it.

At the last instant, she wheeled her horse around to the right. The fire roared by so close she could smell burnt hair, and then she was racing again.

As she charged the horse ahead, the wizard’s fire exploded behind, cascading across the ground like a burst dam. The horrifying death screams of man and beast caught in the conflagration filled the night air. Dozens of men, all afire, rolled through the snow, trying to put out the flames. But wizard’s fire was not so easy to extinguish; it was alive with purpose.

The howls of pain panicked those around who didn’t know what was happening. Men screamed in fear of spirits they thought were setting upon them. Swords were drawn and wielded, hacking at those running for their lives from the fire. Battle erupted out of nothing. The air carried not only the choking stench of burning flesh, but now blood.