Naked Empire

by Angreal

  "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 t
he 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 soldi
ers 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.