Naked Empire

by Angreal

  "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 accept
ed 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."

  * * *

  CHAPTER 36

  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.