Страница:
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."
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."