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I thought, then, of my men back in the hills, depending on me to find the
Lord Rahl and get him to come to Bandakar and give us freedom.
"We were taken through a heavy door into a dim room that filled me with
fear because it stank of blood. The windows on two walls of the stark room
were closed off by shutters. I saw that across the room there was a table
with a broad bowl and, nearby, a row of fat, sharpened wooden stakes
standing nearly as tall as my chest. They were stained dark with blood and
gore.
"Two women and a man with us fainted. Out of anger, the soldiers kicked
them in the heads. When the people did not rise, the soldiers dragged them
away by their arms. I saw blood trails smear along the floor behind them. I
didn't want to have my head caved in by the boot of one of these gruesome
men, so I resolved not to faint.
"A man swept into the room, suddenly, like a chill wind. I had not ever
been afraid of any man, even Luchan, like I was afraid of this man. He was
dressed in layer upon layer of cloth strips that flowed out behind as he
moved. His jet black hair was swept back and smoothed with oils that made it
glisten. His nose seemed to stick out even more than it would have, had he
not slicked back his hair. His small black eyes were rimmed in red. When
those beady eyes fixed on me, I had to remind myself that I had vowed not to
faint.
"He peered at each person in turn as he slowly walked past us, as if he
were picking out a turnip for dinner. It was then, as his knobby fingers
came out from his odd clothes to point in a waving manner at one person and
then another until he had pointed out five people, that I saw that his
fingernails were all painted as black as his hair.
"His hand waved, dismissing the rest of us. The soldiers moved between
the five people this man had pointed out and the rest of us. They started
pushing us toward the door, but just then, before we could be ushered out, a
commander with a nose that had been flattened to the side, as if from being
broken repeatedly, came in and said that the messenger had arrived. The man
with the black hair ran his black nails back through his black hair and told
the commander to tell the messenger to wait, that by morning he would have
the latest information.
"I was then led out and down the stairs along with the rest of the
people. We were taken outside and told to go away, that our services
wouldn't be needed. The soldiers laughed when they said this. I left with
the others, so as not to make the men angry. The people all whispered about
having seen the great man himself. I could think only of what the latest
information might be.
"Later, after dark, I sneaked back, and in the rear of the building I
discovered, behind a gate through a high wooden fence, a narrow alleyway. In
the dark, I entered the alley and hid myself inside a doorway entrance to
the back hall of the building. There were passageways beyond, and, in the
candlelight, I recognized one passage as the place I had been earlier.
"It was late and there was no one in the halls. I moved deeper into the
passageways. Rooms and recesses lined each side of the hall, but with the
late hour no one came out. I sneaked up the stairs and crept to the big
thick door to the room where I had been taken.
"It was there, in that dark hall before the big door, that I heard the
most horrifying cries I have ever heard. People were begging and weeping for
their lives, crying for mercy. One woman pleaded endlessly to be put to
death to end her suffering.
"I thought I would vomit, or faint, but one thought kept me still and
hidden, kept me from running as fast as my legs would carry me. That was the
thought that this was the fate of all my people if I did not help them by
bringing Lord Rahl.
"I stayed there all night, in a dark recess in a hall across from the
big door, listening to those poor people in unimaginable agony. I don't know
what the man was doing to them, but I thought I would die of sorrow for
their slow suffering. The whole of the night, the moans of agony never
ceased.
"I shivered in my hiding place, weeping, and told myself that it wasn't
real, that I shouldn't be afraid of what was not real. I imagined the
people's pain, but told myself that I was putting my imagination on top of
my senses--the very thing I had been taught was wrong. I put my thoughts to
Marilee, the times we had been together, and ignored the sounds that were
not real. I could not know what was real, what these sounds really were.
"Early in the morning the commander I had seen before returned. I
peeked carefully out from my dark hiding place. The man with the black hair
came to the door. I knew it was him because when his arm came out of the
room to hand the man a scrolled paper, I saw his black fingernails.
"The man with the black hair said to the commander with the flattened,
crooked nose, he called him 'Najari,' that he had found them. That's what he
said--'them.' Then he said, 'They've made it to the east edge of the
wasteland and are now heading north.' He told the man to give the messenger
the orders right away. Najari said, 'Shouldn't be long, then, Nicholas, and
you will have them and we'll have the power to name our price.' "
Richard spun around. "Nicholas? You heard him say that name?"
Owen blinked in surprise. "Yes. I'm sure of it. He said Nicholas."
Kahlan felt a weary hopelessness settle over her, like the cold, wet
mist.
Richard gestured urgently. "Go on."
"Well, I wasn't sure that they were talking about you--about the Lord
Rahl and the Mother Confessor--when the commander said 'them,' but by the
grim excitement in their voices I had the impression that it was so. Their
voices reminded me of the first time the Order came, at the way Luchan
smiled at me in a way I had never seen before, like he might eat me.
"I thought that this information was my best chance to find you. So I
started out at once."
Borne on a light gust, drizzle replaced the morning mist. Kahlan
realized that she was shivering with the cold.
Richard pointed at the man sitting on the ground not far away, the man
with the notch in his right ear, the man Kahlan had touched. Some of the
storm within Richard boiled to the surface.
"There is the man the orders from Nicholas were sent to. He brought
with him those men you saw at our last camp. Had we not defended ourselves,
had we put our own sincere hatred of violence above the nature of reality,
we would be as lost as Marilee."
Owen stared at the man. "What is his name?"
"I don't know and it doesn't matter to me in the least. He fought for
the Imperial Order--fought to uphold a view of all life, including his, as
unimportant, interchangeable, expendable in the mindless pursuit of an ideal
that holds individual lives as worthless in themselves--a tenet that demands
sacrifice to others until you are nothing.
"He fights for the dream of everybody to be nobody and nothing.
"The beliefs of the Order hold that you had no right to love Marilee,
that everyone is the same and so your duty should be to marry someone who
could best use your help. In that way, through selfless sacrifice, you would
properly serve your fellow man. Despite how you struggle not to see what's
before your eyes, Owen, I think somewhere beneath all your regurgitated
teachings, you know that that is the greatest horror brought by the
Order--not their brutality, but their ideas. It is their beliefs that
sanction brutality, and yours that invite it.
"He didn't value his own life, who he was; why should I care what his
name was. I give him what was his greatest ambition: nothingness."
When Richard saw Kahlan shivering in the cold drizzle, he withdrew his
hot glare from Owen and retrieved her cloak from her pack in the wagon. With
the utmost gentleness and care, he wrapped it around her shoulders. By the
look on his face, he seemed to have had all he could take of listening to
Owen.
Kahlan seized his hand, holding it to her cheek for a moment. There was
some small good in the story they had heard from Owen.
"This means that the gift isn't killing you, Richard," she said in a
confidential tone. "It was the poison."
She was relieved that they hadn't run out of time to get him help, as
she had so feared on that brief, eternal wagon ride when he'd been
unconscious.
"I had the headaches before I ran into Owen. I still have the
headaches. The sword's magic as well faltered before I was poisoned."
"But at least this now gives us more time to find the solutions to
those problems."
He ran his fingers back through his hair. "I'm afraid we have worse
problems, now, and not the time you think."
"Worse problems?"
Richard nodded. "You know the empire Owen comes from? Ban-dakar? Guess
what 'Bandakar' means."
Kahlan glanced at Owen sitting hunched on the crate and all by himself.
She shook her head as her gaze returned to Richard's gray eyes, troubled
more by the suppressed rage in his voice than anything else.
"I don't know, what?"
"In High D'Haran it's a name. It means 'the banished.' Remember from
the book, The Pillars of Creation, when I was telling you what it said about
how they decided to send all the pristinely ungifted people away to the Old
World--to banish them? Remember that I said no one ever knew what became of
them?
"We just found out.
"The world is now naked before the people of the Bandakaran Empire."
Kahlan frowned. "How can you know for certain that he is a descendant
of those people?"
"Look at him. He's blond and looks more like full-blooded D'Harans than
he does the people down here in the Old World. More importantly, though,
he's not affected by magic."
"But that could be just him."
Richard leaned in closer. "In a closed place like he comes from, a
place shut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, even one
pillar of Creation would have spread that ungifted trait throughout the
entire population by now.
"But there wasn't just one; they were all ungifted. For that, they were
banished to the Old World, and in the Old World, where they tried to
establish a new life, they were again all collected and banished to that
place beyond those mountains--a place they were told was for the bandakar,
the banished."
"How did the people in the Old World find out about them? How did they
keep them all together, without a single one surviving to spread their
ungifted trait to the general population, and how did they manage to then
put them all in that place--banish them?"
"Good questions, all, but right now not the important ones.
"Owen," Richard called as he turned back to the others, "I want you to
stay right there, please, while the rest of us decide what will be our
single voice about what we must do."
Owen brightened at a method of doing things with which he identified
and felt comfortable. He didn't seem to detect, as did Kahlan, the
undercurrent of sarcasm in Richard's voice.
"You," Richard said to the man Kahlan had touched, "go sit beside him
and see that he waits there with you."
While the man scurried to do as he was told, Richard tilted his head in
gesture to the rest of them, calling them away with him. "We need to talk."
Friedrich, Tom, Jennsen, Cara, and Kahlan followed Richard away from
Owen and the man. Richard leaned back against the chafing rail of the wagon
and folded his arms as they all gathered close around him. He took time to
appraise each face looking at him.
"We have big problems," Richard began, "and not just from the poison
Owen gave me. Owen isn't gifted. He's like you, Jennsen. Magic doesn't touch
him." His gaze remained locked on Jennsen's. "The rest of his people are the
same as he, as you."
Jennsen's jaw fell open in astonishment. She looked confused, as if
unable to reconcile it all in her mind. Friedrich and Tom looked nearly as
startled. Cara's brow drew down in a dark frown.
"Richard," Jennsen finally said, "that just can't be. There's too many
of them. There's no way that they can all be half brothers and sisters of
ours."
"They aren't half brothers and sisters," Richard said. "They're a line
of people descended from the House of Rahl--people like you. I don't have
time right now to explain all of it to you, but remember how I told you that
you would bear children who were like you, and they would pass that
pristinely ungifted trait on to all future generations? Well, back a long
time ago, there were people like that spreading in D'Hara. The people back
then gathered up all these ungifted people and sent them to the Old World.
The people down here then sealed them away beyond those mountains, there.
The name of their empire, Bandakar, means 'the banished.' "
Jennsen's big blue eyes filled with tears. She was one of those people,
people so hated that they had been banished from the rest of the people in
their own land and sent into exile.
Kahlan put an arm around her shoulders. "Remember how you said that you
felt alone in the world?" Kahlan smiled warmly. "You don't have to feel
alone anymore. There are people like you."
Kahlan didn't think her words seemed to help much, but Jennsen welcomed
the comfort of the embrace.
Jennsen abruptly looked back up at Richard. "That can't be true. They
had a boundary that kept them locked in that place. If they were like me
they wouldn't be affected by a boundary of magic. They could have come out
of there any time they wished. Over all this time, at least some of them
would have come out into the rest of the world-- the magic of the boundary
couldn't have held them back."
"I don't think that's true," Richard said. "Remember when you saw the
sand flowing sideways in that warning beacon that Sabar brought us? That was
magic, and you saw it."
"That's right," Kahlan said. "If she's a pillar of Creation, then how
is such a thing possible?"
"That's right," Jennsen agreed. "How could that be, if I'm truly
ungifted?" Her eyebrows went up. "Richard--maybe it's not true after all.
Maybe I have a bit of the spark of the gift--maybe I'm not really, truly
ungifted."
Richard smiled. "Jennsen, you're as pure as a snowflake. You saw that
magic for a reason. Nicci wrote us in her letter that the warning beacon was
linked to the wizard who created it--linked to him in the underworld. The
underworld is the world of the dead. That means that the statue functioned
partly through Subtractive Magic--magic having to do with the underworld.
You may be immune to magic, but you are not immune to death. Gifted or not,
you're still linked to life, and thus death.
"That's why you saw some of the magic of the statue--the part relating
to the advancement of death.
"The boundary was a place in this world where death itself existed.
To go into that boundary was to enter the world of the dead. No one
returns from the dead. If any pristinely ungifted person in Bandakar had
gone into the boundary, they would have died. That was how they were sealed
in."
"But they could banish people through the boundary," Jennsen pressed.
"That would have to mean that the boundary didn't really affect them."
Richard was shaking his head even as she was protesting. "No. They were
touched by death, the same as anyone. But there was a way left through the
boundary--much like the one that once divided the three lands of the New
World. I got through that boundary without being touched by it. There was a
pass through it, a special, hidden place to get through the boundary. This
one was the same."
Jennsen wrinkled her nose. "That makes no sense, then. If that was
true, and it wasn't hidden from them--since they all knew of this passage
through the boundary--then why couldn't they all just leave if they wanted
to? How could it seal the rest of them in, if they could send banished
people through?"
Richard sighed, wiping a hand across his face. It looked to Kahlan like
he wished she hadn't asked that question.
"You know the area we passed a while back?" Richard asked her. "That
place where nothing grew?"
Jennsen nodded. "I remember."
"Well, Sabar said he came through another one, a little to the north of
here."
"That's right," Kahlan said. "And it ran toward the center of the
wasteland, toward the Pillars of Creation--just like the one we saw. They
had to be roughly parallel."
Richard was nodding to what she was beginning to suspect. "And they
were to either side of the notch into Bandakar. They weren't very far apart.
We're in that place right now, between those two boundaries."
Friedrich leaned in. "But Lord Rahl, that would mean that if someone
was banished from the Bandakaran Empire, when they emerged from that
boundary they would find themselves trapped between the walls of these two
boundaries out here, and there wasn't much room between them. A person would
have nowhere to go but..."
Friedrich covered his mouth as he turned west, looking off into the
gloom.
"The Pillars of Creation," Richard finished with quiet finality.
"But, but," Jennsen stammered, "are you saying that someone made it
that way? Made these two boundaries deliberately to force anyone who was
sent out of the Bandakaran Empire to go into that place--the Pillars of
Creation? Why?"
Richard looked into her eyes for a long moment. "To kill them."
Jennsen swallowed. "You mean, whoever banished these people wanted
anyone they in turn sent out, anyone they exiled, to die?"
"Yes," Richard said.
Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself. It had been hot for so
long she could hardly believe that the weather had so suddenly turned cold.
Richard swiped a lock of wet hair back off his forehead as he went on.
"From what Adie told me once, boundaries have to have a pass to create
balance on both sides, to equalize the life on both sides. I suspect that
those down here in the Old World who banished these people wanted to give
them a way to get rid of criminals and so told the people about the
existence of the pass. But they didn't want such people to be loosed on the
rest of the world. Criminals or not, they were ungifted. They couldn't be
allowed to run free."
Kahlan immediately saw the problem with his theory. "But all three
boundaries would have had to have a pass," she said. "Even if the other two
passes, in the remaining two boundaries, were secret, that still left the
possibility that anyone exiled and sent through the notch might find one of
them and so not try to escape through the Pillars of Creation where they
would die. That left the chance that they might still escape into the Old
World."
"If there really were three boundaries, such might be the case,"
Richard said. "But I don't think there were three. I think there really was
only one."
"Now you're not making any sense," Cara complained. "You said there was
the one going north and south blocking the pass, and then there were these
two parallel ones out here, going east and west, to funnel anyone who came
out of the empire through that first boundary, toward the Pillars of
Creation where they would die."
Kahlan had to agree. It seemed that there might be a chance for someone
to escape through one of the other two.
"I don't think there were three boundaries," Richard repeated. "I think
there was only one. That one boundary wasn't straight--it was bent in half."
He held two fingers up, side by side. "The bottom of the bend went across
the pass." He pointed at the web between the two fingers. "The two legs
extended out here, parallel, going off to where they ended at the Pillars."
Jennsen could only ask "Why?"
"It seems to me, by how elaborate the whole design was, that the ones
who sealed those people in wanted to give them a way to rid themselves of
dangerous people, possibly knowing from what they had learned of their
beliefs that they would balk at executing anyone. When these people were
banished here to the Old World, they may have already had at least the core
of the same beliefs they hold now. Those beliefs leave them completely
vulnerable to those who are evil. Protecting their way of life, without
executing criminals, meant they had to cast such people out of their
community or be destroyed by them.
"The banishment away from D'Hara and the New World, across the barrier
into the Old World, must have terrified them. They stuck together as a means
of survival, a common bond.
"Those down here in the Old World who put them behind that boundary
must have used those people's fear of persecution to convince them that the
boundary was meant to protect them, to keep others from harming them. They
must have convinced those people that, since they were special, they needed
such protection. That, along with their well-established need to stick
together, had to have reinforced in them a terrible fear of being put out of
their protected place. Banishment had a special terror to those people.
"They must have felt the anguish of being rejected by the rest of the
peoples of the world because they were ungifted, but, together as they were,
they also felt safe behind the boundary.
"Now that the seal is off, we have big problems."
Jennsen folded her arms. "Now that there's more than one of us-- more
than one snowflake--you're having worries about a snowstorm?"
Richard fixed her with a reproachful look. "Why do you think the Order
came in and took some of their people?"
"Apparently," Jennsen said, "to breed more children like them. To breed
precious magic out of the race of man."
Richard ignored the heat in her words. "No, I mean why would they take
men?"
"Same reason," Jennsen said. "To mate with regular women and give them
ungifted children."
Richard drew in a patient breath and let it out slowly. "What did Owen
say? The men were taken to see the women and told that if they didn't follow
orders those women would be skinned alive."
Jennsen hesitated. "What orders?"
Richard leaned toward her. "What orders, indeed. Think about it," he
said, looking around at the rest of them. "What orders? What would they want
ungifted men for? What is it they would want ungifted men to do?"
Kahlan gasped. "The Keep!"
"Exactly." Richard's unsettling gaze met each of them in turn. "Like I
said, we have big problems. Zedd is protecting the Keep. With his ability
and the magic of that place he can no doubt single-handedly hold off
Jagang's entire army.
"But how is that skinny old man going to resist even one young ungifted
man who is untouched by magic and comes up and grabs him by the throat?"
Jennsen's hand came away from her mouth. "You're right, Richard.
Jagang, too, has that book--The Pillars of Creation. He knows how those like
me aren't touched by magic. He tried to use me in that very way. That's why
he worked so hard to convince me that you were trying to kill me--so that I
would think my only chance was to kill you first. He knew I was ungifted and
couldn't be stopped by magic."
"And, Jagang is from the Old World," Richard added. "In all likelihood
he would have known something about the empire beyond that boundary. For all
we know, in the Old World Bandakar might be legendary, while those in the
New World, beyond the great barrier for three thousand years, would never
have known what happened to those people.
"Now, the Order has been taking men from there and threatening them
with the brutal murder of their defenseless women--women who are loved
ones--if those men don't follow orders. I think those orders are to assault
the Wizard's Keep and capture it for the Imperial Order."
Kahlan's legs shook. If the Keep fell, they would lose the one real
advantage, however limited, they had. With the Keep in the hands of the
Order, all those ancient and deadly things of magic would be available to
Jagang. There was no telling what he might unleash. There were things in the
Keep that could kill them all, Jagang included. He had already proven with
the plague he'd unleashed that he was willing to kill any number to have his
way, that he was willing to use any weapon, even if such weapons decimated
his own people as well.
Even if Jagang did nothing with the Keep, just him having control of it
denied the D'Haran Empire the possibility of finding something there that
could help them. That was, in addition to protecting the Keep, what Zedd was
doing while he was there--trying to find something that would help them win
the war, or at least find a way to put the Imperial Order back behind a
barrier of some kind and confine them to the Old World.
Without the Keep, their cause would likely be hopeless. Resistance
would be nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Without the Keep on
their side, all resistance to Jagang would eventually be crushed. His troops
would pour into every part of the New World. There would be no stopping
them.
With trembling fingers Kahlan clutched her cloak closed. She knew what
awaited her people, what it was like when the Imperial Order invaded and
overpowered places. She had been with the army for nearly a year, fighting
against them. They were like a pack of wild dogs. There was no peace with
such animals after you. They would be satisfied only when they could tear
you apart.
Kahlan had been to cities, like Ebinissia, that had been overrun by
Imperial Order soldiers. In a wild binge of savagery that went on for days,
they had tortured, raped, and murdered every person trapped in the city,
finally leaving it a wasteland of human corpses. None, no matter their age,
had been spared.
That was what the people of the New World had to look forward to.
With enemy troops overrunning all of the New World, any trade that was
not already disrupted would be brought to a standstill. Nearly all
businesses would fail. The livelihood of countless people would be lost.
Food would quickly become scarce, and then simply unavailable at any cost.
People would have no means of supporting themselves and their families.
People would lose everything for which they had worked a lifetime.
Cities, even before the troops arrived, would be in a destructive
panic. When the enemy troops arrived, most people would be burned out of
their homes, driven from their cities and their land. Jagang would steal all
supplies of food for his troops and give conquered land to his favored
elite. The true owners of that land would perish, or become slaves working
their own farms. Those who escaped before the invading horde would
desperately cling to life, living like animals in wild areas.
Most of the population would be in flight, running for their lives.
Hundreds of thousands would be out in the elements without shelter. There
would be little food, and no ability to prepare for winter. When the weather
turned harsh, they would perish in droves.
As civilization crumbled and starvation became the norm, disease would
sweep across the land, catching up those on the run. Families would collapse
as those they depended on suffered agonizingly slow and painful deaths.
Children and the weak would be alone, to be preyed upon as a source of food
for the starving.
Kahlan knew what such widespread disease was like. She knew what it was
to watch people dying by the thousands. She had seen it happen in Aydindril
when the plague was there. She saw scores stricken without warning. She had
watched the old, the young--such good people-- contract something they could
not fight, watched them suffer in misery for days before they died.
Richard had been stricken with that plague. Unlike everyone else,
though, he had gotten it knowingly. Taking the plague deliberately had been
the price to get back to her. He had traded his life just to be with her
again before he died.
That had been a time beyond horror.
Kahlan knew, firsthand, savage desperation. It was then that she had
taken the only chance available to her to save his life. It was then that
she had loosed the chimes. That act had saved Richard's life. She hadn't
known at the time that it would also be a catalyst that would set unforeseen
events into motion.
Because of her desperate act, the boundary to this empire had lost its
power and failed. Because of her, all magic might eventually fail.
Now, because of that boundary failing, the Wizard's Keep, their last
bastion to work a solution against the Order, was in terrible jeopardy.
Kahlan felt as if it was all her fault.
The world was on the brink of destruction. Civilization stood at the
threshold of obliteration in the name of the Order's mindless idea of a
greater good. The Order demanded sacrifice to that greater good; what they
were determined to sacrifice was reason, and, therefore, civilization
itself. Madness had cast its shadow across the world and would have them
all.
They now stood in the edge of the shadow of a dark age. They were all
on the eve of the end times.
Kahlan couldn't say that, though. She couldn't tell them how she felt.
She dared not reveal her despair.
"Richard, we simply can't allow the Order to capture the Keep." Kahlan
could hardly believe how calm and determined her voice sounded. She wondered
if anyone else would believe that she thought they still stood a chance. "We
have to stop them."
"I agree," Richard said.
He sounded determined, too. She wondered if he saw in her eyes the true
depths of her despair.
"First," he said, "the easy part: Nicci and Victor. We have to tell
them that we can't come now. Victor needs to know what we would say to him.
He will need to know that we agree with his plans--that he must proceed and
that he can't wait for us. We've talked with him; he knows what to do. Now,
he must do it, and Priska must know that he has to help.
"Nicci needs to know where we're going. She needs to know that we
believe we've discovered the cause of the warning beacon. She has to know
where we are."
He left unsaid that she had to come to help him if he couldn't get to
her because his gift was killing him.
"She needs to know, too," Richard said, "that we only had a chance to
read part of her warning about what Jagang was doing with the Sisters of the
Dark in creating weapons out of people."
Everyone's eyes widened. They hadn't read the letter.
"Well," Kahlan said, "with all the other problems we have, at least
that's one we won't have to deal with for now."
"We have that much on our side," Richard agreed. He gestured to the man
watching, the man waiting for Kahlan to command him. "We'll send him to
Victor and Nicci so they will know everything."
"And then what?" Cara asked.
"I want Kahlan to command him that when he's finished with carrying out
that part of his orders, he's then to go north and find the Imperial Order
army. I want him to pretend to be one of them to get close enough to
assassinate Emperor Jagang."
Kahlan knew how implausible such a scheme was. By the way everyone
stared in astonishment, they had a good idea, too.
"Jagang has layers of men to protect him from assassination," Jenn-sen
said. "He's always surrounded by special guards. Regular soldiers can't even
get close to him."
"Do you really think he has any chance at all to accomplish such a
thing?" Kahlan asked.
"No," Richard admitted. "The Order will most likely kill him before he
can get to Jagang. But he will be driven by the need to fulfill your orders.
He will be single-minded. I expect he will be killed in the effort, but I
also suspect he will at least make a good attempt of it. I want Jagang to at
least lose some sleep knowing that any of his men might be assassins. I want
him to worry that he will never know who might be trying to kill him. I
don't want him ever to be able to sleep soundly. I want him to be haunted by
nightmares of what might be coming next, of who among his men might be
waiting for an opening."
Kahlan nodded her agreement. Richard appraised the grim faces waiting
for the rest of what he had to say.
"Now, to the most important part of what must be done. It's vital we
get to the Keep and warn Zedd. We can't delay. Jagang is ahead of us in all
this--he's been planning and acting and we never realized what he was up to.
We don't know how soon those ungifted men might be sent north. We haven't a
moment to lose."
"Lord Rahl," Cara reminded him, "you have to get to the antidote before
time runs out. You can't go running off to the Keep to ... Oh, no. Now you
just wait a minute--you're not sending me to the Keep again. I'm not leaving
you at a time like this, at a time when you're next to defenseless. I won't
hear of it and I won't go."
Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. "Cara, I'm not sending you, but
thanks for offering."
Cara folded her arms and shot him a fiery scowl.
"We can't take the wagon up into Bandakar--there's no road--"
"Lord Rahl," Tom interrupted, "without magic you'll need all the steel
you have." He sounded only slightly less emphatic than Cara had.
Richard smiled. "I know, Tom, and I agree. It's Friedrich who I think
must go." Richard turned to Friedrich. "You can take the wagon. An older
man, by himself, will raise less suspicion than would any of the rest of us.
They won't see you as a threat. You will be able to make better time with
the wagon and without having to worry that the Order might snatch you and
put you in the army. Will you do it, Friedrich?"
Friedrich scratched his stubble. A smile came to his weathered face. "I
guess I'm at last being called upon to be a boundary warden, of sorts."
Richard smiled with him. "Friedrich, the boundary has failed. As the
Lord Rahl, I appoint you to the post of boundary warden and ask that you
immediately undertake to warn others of the danger come from out of that
boundary."
Friedrich's smile departed as he put a fist to his heart in salute and
solemn pledge.
Somewhere back in a distant room, where his body waited, Nicholas heard
an insistent noise. He was absorbed in the task at hand, so he ignored the
sound. The light was fading, and although light helped to see, darkness
would not hinder eyes such as he used.
Again, he heard the noise. Indignant that the sound kept calling him,
kept annoying him, kept demanding his attention, he returned to his body.
Someone was banging a fist on the door.
Nicholas rose from the floor, where his body sat cross-legged, taking
his body with him. It was always, at first, disorienting to have to be in
his body again, to be so limited, so confined. It felt awkward to have to
move it about, to use his own muscles, to breathe, to see, to hear with his
own senses.
The knock came again. Irate at the interruption, Nicholas went not to
the door but to the windows, and threw the shutters closed. He cast a hand
out, igniting the torch, and finally stalked to the door. Layered strips of
cloth covering his robes flowed out behind, like a heavy mantle of black
feathers.
"What is it!" He threw open the heavy door and peered out.
Najari stood just outside, in the hall, his weight on one foot, his
thumbs hooked behind his belt. His muscular shoulders nearly touched the
walls to each side. Nicholas saw, then, the huddled crowd behind the man.
Najari's crooked nose, flattened to the left in some of the numerous brawls
his temper got him into, cast an oddly shaped shadow across his cheek.
Anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in a brawl with Najari usually
suffered far worse than a mere broken nose.
Najari waggled a thumb over his shoulder. "You asked for some guests,
Nicholas."
Nicholas raked his nails back through his hair, feeling the silken
smooth pleasure of oils gliding against his palm. He rolled his shoulders,
ruffling away his pique.
Nicholas had been so absorbed in what he had been doing that he had
forgotten that he had requested that Najari bring him some bodies.
"Very good, Najari. Bring them in, then. Let's have a look at them."
Nicholas watched as the commander led the gaggle of people into the
flickering torchlight. Soldiers in the rear herded the stragglers through
the door and into the large room. Heads swiveled around, looking at the
strange, stark surroundings, at the wooden walls, the torches in brackets,
the plank flooring, the lack of furniture other than a stout table. Noses
twitched at the sharp smell of blood.
Nicholas watched carefully as people spotted the sharpened stakes
standing in a line along the wall to their right, stakes as thick as
Najari's wrists.
Nicholas studied the people, watching for the telltales of fear as they
spread out along the wall beside the door. Eyes flitted about, worried, and
at the same time eager to take it all in so they could report to their
friends what they had seen inside. Nicholas knew that he was an object of
great curiosity.
A rare being.
A Slide.
No one knew what his name meant. This day, some would learn.
Nicholas glided past the undulating mob. They were a curious people,
these odd, ungifted creatures, curious like mockingbirds, but not nearly so
bold. Because they were without any spark whatsoever of the gift, Nicholas
had to handle them in special ways in order for them to be of any use to
him. It was a bother, but it had its rewards.
Some necks craned in his wake, trying to better see the rare man.
He ran his nails through his hair again just to feel the oils slide
against his hand. As he leaned close to some of the people he passed,
observing individuals in the gathering, one of the women before him closed
her eyes, turning her face away. Nicholas lifted a hand toward her, flicking
out a finger. He glanced to Najari to be sure he saw which one had been
picked.
Najari's gaze flicked from the woman up to Nicholas; he had noted the
selection.
A man back against the wall stood stiff, his eyes wide. Nicholas
flicked a finger at him. Another man twisted his lips in an odd manner.
Nicholas glanced down and saw that the man, in a state of wild fright, had
wet himself. Nicholas's finger flitted out again. Three selected. Nicholas
walked on.
A thin whine escaped the throat of a woman in the front, right before
him. He smiled at her. She peered up, trembling, unable to take her
wide-eyed gaze from him, from his red-rimmed black eyes, unable to halt the
puling sound escaping her throat. She had never seen one so human ... yet
not. Nicholas tapped her shoulder with a long-nailed finger. He would reward
her unspoken revulsion with service to a greater good. His.
Jagang had sought to create something ... unusual, for himself. A
bauble of flesh and blood. A magical trinket crafted from a wizard. A lapdog
... with teeth.
His Excellency had gotten what he wanted, and more. Oh, so much more.
Nicholas would enjoy seeing how the emperor liked having a puppet
without strings, a specially crafted creation with a mind of its own, and
talents to fulfill his wishes.
A man at the rear, against the wall, appeared to be somewhat
uninterested, as if impatient for the exhibition to be over so he could go
back to his own affairs. While none of these people could be said to think
of themselves as important individuals with consequential sway over any
meaningful aspects of life in their empire, a few occasionally exhibited
tendencies, even if inconsistent, toward self-interest. Nicholas flicked his
finger for the fifth time. The man would soon have reason to be highly
interested in the proceedings, and he would find that he was no better than
anyone else. He would be going nowhere--at least not in body.
Everyone stared in silence as Nicholas chuckled alone at his own joke.
His amusement ended. Nicholas tipped his head toward the door in a
single nod. The soldiers jumped into action.
"All right," Najari growled, "move along. Move! Get going. Out, out,
out!"
The feet of the crowd shuffled urgently through the door as ordered.
Some people cast worried glances back over their shoulders at the five
Najari had cut out of the flock. Those five were shoved back when they
sought to stay with the rest. A stiff finger to the chest backed them up as
effectively as would a club or a sword.
"Don't cause any trouble," Najari warned, "or you will be making
trouble for the others."
The five remaining huddled close to one another, rocking nervously side
to side like a covey of quail before a bird dog.
When the soldiers had driven the rest of the people out, Najari closed
the door and stood before it, hands clasped behind his back.
Nicholas returned to the windows, opening the shutters on the west
wall. The sun was down, leaving a red slash across the sky.
Soon they would be on the wing, on the hunt.
Nicholas would be with them.
Casting an arm back without needing to turn to look, he doused the
torch. The flickering light was a distraction during this cusp of time, the
transient twilight that was so fragile, so brief. He would need the light,
but, at the moment, he wanted only to see the sky, to see the glorious,
unbounded sky.
"Are we going to be able to leave soon?" one of the people asked in a
timid squeak.
Nicholas turned and peered at them. Najari's eyes revealed which one
had spoken. Nicholas followed his commander's gaze. It was one of the
men--the one who had been impatient to leave, of course.
"Go?" Nicholas asked as he swept in close to the man. "You wish to go?"
The man stood with his back bent, leaning away from Nicholas.
"Well, sir, I was only wondering when we would be going."
Nicholas stooped in even more, peering deeply into the man's eyes.
"Wonder in silence," he hissed.
Returning to the windows, Nicholas rested his hands on the sill, his
weight on his arms, as he breathed in deeply the gathering night while
taking in the sweep of crimson sky.
Soon, he would be there, be free.
Soon, he would soar as no one else but he could.
Impulsively, he sought them.
Eyes bulging with the effort, he cast his senses where none but his
could go.
"There!" he screeched, throwing his arm out, pointing a long black nail
at what none but he could see. "There! One has taken to wing."
Nicholas spun around, strips of cloth lifting, floating up. Panting
through a rush of fluttering excitement, he gazed at the eyes staring at
him. They could not know. They could not understand one such as he,
understand what he felt, what he needed. He hungered to be on the hunt, to
be with them, ever since he had imagined such a use for his ability.
He had reveled in the experience, dedicating himself to it as he
learned his new abilities. He had been off with those glorious creatures as
often as he could afford the time, ever since he had come here and
discovered them.
How ironic it now seemed that he had resisted. How odd that he once had
feared what those gruesome women, those Sisters of the Dark, had conspired
to do to him ... what they had done to him.
His duty, they had called it.
Their vile magic had cut like a red-hot blade through him. He had
thought his eyes might burst from his head from the pain that had seared
through him. Tied spread-eagled to stakes in the ground in the center of
their wicked circle, he had dreaded what they were going to do to him.
He had feared it.
Nicholas smiled.
Hated it, even.
He had been afraid because of the pain, the pain of what they were
doing to him, and the even greater pain of not knowing what more they
intended to do to him. His duty, they had called it, to a greater good. His
ability bore responsibilities, they had insisted.
He watched through glazed eyes as Najari bound the hands of the five
people behind each of their backs.
"Thank you, Najari," he said when the man had finished.
Najari approached. "The men will have them by now, Nicholas. I told
them to send enough men to insure that they would not escape." Najari
grinned at the prospect. "There's no need to worry. They should all be on
their way back to us."
Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "We will see. We will see."
He wanted to see it himself. With his own vision--even if his own
vision was through another's eyes.
Lord Rahl and get him to come to Bandakar and give us freedom.
"We were taken through a heavy door into a dim room that filled me with
fear because it stank of blood. The windows on two walls of the stark room
were closed off by shutters. I saw that across the room there was a table
with a broad bowl and, nearby, a row of fat, sharpened wooden stakes
standing nearly as tall as my chest. They were stained dark with blood and
gore.
"Two women and a man with us fainted. Out of anger, the soldiers kicked
them in the heads. When the people did not rise, the soldiers dragged them
away by their arms. I saw blood trails smear along the floor behind them. I
didn't want to have my head caved in by the boot of one of these gruesome
men, so I resolved not to faint.
"A man swept into the room, suddenly, like a chill wind. I had not ever
been afraid of any man, even Luchan, like I was afraid of this man. He was
dressed in layer upon layer of cloth strips that flowed out behind as he
moved. His jet black hair was swept back and smoothed with oils that made it
glisten. His nose seemed to stick out even more than it would have, had he
not slicked back his hair. His small black eyes were rimmed in red. When
those beady eyes fixed on me, I had to remind myself that I had vowed not to
faint.
"He peered at each person in turn as he slowly walked past us, as if he
were picking out a turnip for dinner. It was then, as his knobby fingers
came out from his odd clothes to point in a waving manner at one person and
then another until he had pointed out five people, that I saw that his
fingernails were all painted as black as his hair.
"His hand waved, dismissing the rest of us. The soldiers moved between
the five people this man had pointed out and the rest of us. They started
pushing us toward the door, but just then, before we could be ushered out, a
commander with a nose that had been flattened to the side, as if from being
broken repeatedly, came in and said that the messenger had arrived. The man
with the black hair ran his black nails back through his black hair and told
the commander to tell the messenger to wait, that by morning he would have
the latest information.
"I was then led out and down the stairs along with the rest of the
people. We were taken outside and told to go away, that our services
wouldn't be needed. The soldiers laughed when they said this. I left with
the others, so as not to make the men angry. The people all whispered about
having seen the great man himself. I could think only of what the latest
information might be.
"Later, after dark, I sneaked back, and in the rear of the building I
discovered, behind a gate through a high wooden fence, a narrow alleyway. In
the dark, I entered the alley and hid myself inside a doorway entrance to
the back hall of the building. There were passageways beyond, and, in the
candlelight, I recognized one passage as the place I had been earlier.
"It was late and there was no one in the halls. I moved deeper into the
passageways. Rooms and recesses lined each side of the hall, but with the
late hour no one came out. I sneaked up the stairs and crept to the big
thick door to the room where I had been taken.
"It was there, in that dark hall before the big door, that I heard the
most horrifying cries I have ever heard. People were begging and weeping for
their lives, crying for mercy. One woman pleaded endlessly to be put to
death to end her suffering.
"I thought I would vomit, or faint, but one thought kept me still and
hidden, kept me from running as fast as my legs would carry me. That was the
thought that this was the fate of all my people if I did not help them by
bringing Lord Rahl.
"I stayed there all night, in a dark recess in a hall across from the
big door, listening to those poor people in unimaginable agony. I don't know
what the man was doing to them, but I thought I would die of sorrow for
their slow suffering. The whole of the night, the moans of agony never
ceased.
"I shivered in my hiding place, weeping, and told myself that it wasn't
real, that I shouldn't be afraid of what was not real. I imagined the
people's pain, but told myself that I was putting my imagination on top of
my senses--the very thing I had been taught was wrong. I put my thoughts to
Marilee, the times we had been together, and ignored the sounds that were
not real. I could not know what was real, what these sounds really were.
"Early in the morning the commander I had seen before returned. I
peeked carefully out from my dark hiding place. The man with the black hair
came to the door. I knew it was him because when his arm came out of the
room to hand the man a scrolled paper, I saw his black fingernails.
"The man with the black hair said to the commander with the flattened,
crooked nose, he called him 'Najari,' that he had found them. That's what he
said--'them.' Then he said, 'They've made it to the east edge of the
wasteland and are now heading north.' He told the man to give the messenger
the orders right away. Najari said, 'Shouldn't be long, then, Nicholas, and
you will have them and we'll have the power to name our price.' "
Richard spun around. "Nicholas? You heard him say that name?"
Owen blinked in surprise. "Yes. I'm sure of it. He said Nicholas."
Kahlan felt a weary hopelessness settle over her, like the cold, wet
mist.
Richard gestured urgently. "Go on."
"Well, I wasn't sure that they were talking about you--about the Lord
Rahl and the Mother Confessor--when the commander said 'them,' but by the
grim excitement in their voices I had the impression that it was so. Their
voices reminded me of the first time the Order came, at the way Luchan
smiled at me in a way I had never seen before, like he might eat me.
"I thought that this information was my best chance to find you. So I
started out at once."
Borne on a light gust, drizzle replaced the morning mist. Kahlan
realized that she was shivering with the cold.
Richard pointed at the man sitting on the ground not far away, the man
with the notch in his right ear, the man Kahlan had touched. Some of the
storm within Richard boiled to the surface.
"There is the man the orders from Nicholas were sent to. He brought
with him those men you saw at our last camp. Had we not defended ourselves,
had we put our own sincere hatred of violence above the nature of reality,
we would be as lost as Marilee."
Owen stared at the man. "What is his name?"
"I don't know and it doesn't matter to me in the least. He fought for
the Imperial Order--fought to uphold a view of all life, including his, as
unimportant, interchangeable, expendable in the mindless pursuit of an ideal
that holds individual lives as worthless in themselves--a tenet that demands
sacrifice to others until you are nothing.
"He fights for the dream of everybody to be nobody and nothing.
"The beliefs of the Order hold that you had no right to love Marilee,
that everyone is the same and so your duty should be to marry someone who
could best use your help. In that way, through selfless sacrifice, you would
properly serve your fellow man. Despite how you struggle not to see what's
before your eyes, Owen, I think somewhere beneath all your regurgitated
teachings, you know that that is the greatest horror brought by the
Order--not their brutality, but their ideas. It is their beliefs that
sanction brutality, and yours that invite it.
"He didn't value his own life, who he was; why should I care what his
name was. I give him what was his greatest ambition: nothingness."
When Richard saw Kahlan shivering in the cold drizzle, he withdrew his
hot glare from Owen and retrieved her cloak from her pack in the wagon. With
the utmost gentleness and care, he wrapped it around her shoulders. By the
look on his face, he seemed to have had all he could take of listening to
Owen.
Kahlan seized his hand, holding it to her cheek for a moment. There was
some small good in the story they had heard from Owen.
"This means that the gift isn't killing you, Richard," she said in a
confidential tone. "It was the poison."
She was relieved that they hadn't run out of time to get him help, as
she had so feared on that brief, eternal wagon ride when he'd been
unconscious.
"I had the headaches before I ran into Owen. I still have the
headaches. The sword's magic as well faltered before I was poisoned."
"But at least this now gives us more time to find the solutions to
those problems."
He ran his fingers back through his hair. "I'm afraid we have worse
problems, now, and not the time you think."
"Worse problems?"
Richard nodded. "You know the empire Owen comes from? Ban-dakar? Guess
what 'Bandakar' means."
Kahlan glanced at Owen sitting hunched on the crate and all by himself.
She shook her head as her gaze returned to Richard's gray eyes, troubled
more by the suppressed rage in his voice than anything else.
"I don't know, what?"
"In High D'Haran it's a name. It means 'the banished.' Remember from
the book, The Pillars of Creation, when I was telling you what it said about
how they decided to send all the pristinely ungifted people away to the Old
World--to banish them? Remember that I said no one ever knew what became of
them?
"We just found out.
"The world is now naked before the people of the Bandakaran Empire."
Kahlan frowned. "How can you know for certain that he is a descendant
of those people?"
"Look at him. He's blond and looks more like full-blooded D'Harans than
he does the people down here in the Old World. More importantly, though,
he's not affected by magic."
"But that could be just him."
Richard leaned in closer. "In a closed place like he comes from, a
place shut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, even one
pillar of Creation would have spread that ungifted trait throughout the
entire population by now.
"But there wasn't just one; they were all ungifted. For that, they were
banished to the Old World, and in the Old World, where they tried to
establish a new life, they were again all collected and banished to that
place beyond those mountains--a place they were told was for the bandakar,
the banished."
"How did the people in the Old World find out about them? How did they
keep them all together, without a single one surviving to spread their
ungifted trait to the general population, and how did they manage to then
put them all in that place--banish them?"
"Good questions, all, but right now not the important ones.
"Owen," Richard called as he turned back to the others, "I want you to
stay right there, please, while the rest of us decide what will be our
single voice about what we must do."
Owen brightened at a method of doing things with which he identified
and felt comfortable. He didn't seem to detect, as did Kahlan, the
undercurrent of sarcasm in Richard's voice.
"You," Richard said to the man Kahlan had touched, "go sit beside him
and see that he waits there with you."
While the man scurried to do as he was told, Richard tilted his head in
gesture to the rest of them, calling them away with him. "We need to talk."
Friedrich, Tom, Jennsen, Cara, and Kahlan followed Richard away from
Owen and the man. Richard leaned back against the chafing rail of the wagon
and folded his arms as they all gathered close around him. He took time to
appraise each face looking at him.
"We have big problems," Richard began, "and not just from the poison
Owen gave me. Owen isn't gifted. He's like you, Jennsen. Magic doesn't touch
him." His gaze remained locked on Jennsen's. "The rest of his people are the
same as he, as you."
Jennsen's jaw fell open in astonishment. She looked confused, as if
unable to reconcile it all in her mind. Friedrich and Tom looked nearly as
startled. Cara's brow drew down in a dark frown.
"Richard," Jennsen finally said, "that just can't be. There's too many
of them. There's no way that they can all be half brothers and sisters of
ours."
"They aren't half brothers and sisters," Richard said. "They're a line
of people descended from the House of Rahl--people like you. I don't have
time right now to explain all of it to you, but remember how I told you that
you would bear children who were like you, and they would pass that
pristinely ungifted trait on to all future generations? Well, back a long
time ago, there were people like that spreading in D'Hara. The people back
then gathered up all these ungifted people and sent them to the Old World.
The people down here then sealed them away beyond those mountains, there.
The name of their empire, Bandakar, means 'the banished.' "
Jennsen's big blue eyes filled with tears. She was one of those people,
people so hated that they had been banished from the rest of the people in
their own land and sent into exile.
Kahlan put an arm around her shoulders. "Remember how you said that you
felt alone in the world?" Kahlan smiled warmly. "You don't have to feel
alone anymore. There are people like you."
Kahlan didn't think her words seemed to help much, but Jennsen welcomed
the comfort of the embrace.
Jennsen abruptly looked back up at Richard. "That can't be true. They
had a boundary that kept them locked in that place. If they were like me
they wouldn't be affected by a boundary of magic. They could have come out
of there any time they wished. Over all this time, at least some of them
would have come out into the rest of the world-- the magic of the boundary
couldn't have held them back."
"I don't think that's true," Richard said. "Remember when you saw the
sand flowing sideways in that warning beacon that Sabar brought us? That was
magic, and you saw it."
"That's right," Kahlan said. "If she's a pillar of Creation, then how
is such a thing possible?"
"That's right," Jennsen agreed. "How could that be, if I'm truly
ungifted?" Her eyebrows went up. "Richard--maybe it's not true after all.
Maybe I have a bit of the spark of the gift--maybe I'm not really, truly
ungifted."
Richard smiled. "Jennsen, you're as pure as a snowflake. You saw that
magic for a reason. Nicci wrote us in her letter that the warning beacon was
linked to the wizard who created it--linked to him in the underworld. The
underworld is the world of the dead. That means that the statue functioned
partly through Subtractive Magic--magic having to do with the underworld.
You may be immune to magic, but you are not immune to death. Gifted or not,
you're still linked to life, and thus death.
"That's why you saw some of the magic of the statue--the part relating
to the advancement of death.
"The boundary was a place in this world where death itself existed.
To go into that boundary was to enter the world of the dead. No one
returns from the dead. If any pristinely ungifted person in Bandakar had
gone into the boundary, they would have died. That was how they were sealed
in."
"But they could banish people through the boundary," Jennsen pressed.
"That would have to mean that the boundary didn't really affect them."
Richard was shaking his head even as she was protesting. "No. They were
touched by death, the same as anyone. But there was a way left through the
boundary--much like the one that once divided the three lands of the New
World. I got through that boundary without being touched by it. There was a
pass through it, a special, hidden place to get through the boundary. This
one was the same."
Jennsen wrinkled her nose. "That makes no sense, then. If that was
true, and it wasn't hidden from them--since they all knew of this passage
through the boundary--then why couldn't they all just leave if they wanted
to? How could it seal the rest of them in, if they could send banished
people through?"
Richard sighed, wiping a hand across his face. It looked to Kahlan like
he wished she hadn't asked that question.
"You know the area we passed a while back?" Richard asked her. "That
place where nothing grew?"
Jennsen nodded. "I remember."
"Well, Sabar said he came through another one, a little to the north of
here."
"That's right," Kahlan said. "And it ran toward the center of the
wasteland, toward the Pillars of Creation--just like the one we saw. They
had to be roughly parallel."
Richard was nodding to what she was beginning to suspect. "And they
were to either side of the notch into Bandakar. They weren't very far apart.
We're in that place right now, between those two boundaries."
Friedrich leaned in. "But Lord Rahl, that would mean that if someone
was banished from the Bandakaran Empire, when they emerged from that
boundary they would find themselves trapped between the walls of these two
boundaries out here, and there wasn't much room between them. A person would
have nowhere to go but..."
Friedrich covered his mouth as he turned west, looking off into the
gloom.
"The Pillars of Creation," Richard finished with quiet finality.
"But, but," Jennsen stammered, "are you saying that someone made it
that way? Made these two boundaries deliberately to force anyone who was
sent out of the Bandakaran Empire to go into that place--the Pillars of
Creation? Why?"
Richard looked into her eyes for a long moment. "To kill them."
Jennsen swallowed. "You mean, whoever banished these people wanted
anyone they in turn sent out, anyone they exiled, to die?"
"Yes," Richard said.
Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself. It had been hot for so
long she could hardly believe that the weather had so suddenly turned cold.
Richard swiped a lock of wet hair back off his forehead as he went on.
"From what Adie told me once, boundaries have to have a pass to create
balance on both sides, to equalize the life on both sides. I suspect that
those down here in the Old World who banished these people wanted to give
them a way to get rid of criminals and so told the people about the
existence of the pass. But they didn't want such people to be loosed on the
rest of the world. Criminals or not, they were ungifted. They couldn't be
allowed to run free."
Kahlan immediately saw the problem with his theory. "But all three
boundaries would have had to have a pass," she said. "Even if the other two
passes, in the remaining two boundaries, were secret, that still left the
possibility that anyone exiled and sent through the notch might find one of
them and so not try to escape through the Pillars of Creation where they
would die. That left the chance that they might still escape into the Old
World."
"If there really were three boundaries, such might be the case,"
Richard said. "But I don't think there were three. I think there really was
only one."
"Now you're not making any sense," Cara complained. "You said there was
the one going north and south blocking the pass, and then there were these
two parallel ones out here, going east and west, to funnel anyone who came
out of the empire through that first boundary, toward the Pillars of
Creation where they would die."
Kahlan had to agree. It seemed that there might be a chance for someone
to escape through one of the other two.
"I don't think there were three boundaries," Richard repeated. "I think
there was only one. That one boundary wasn't straight--it was bent in half."
He held two fingers up, side by side. "The bottom of the bend went across
the pass." He pointed at the web between the two fingers. "The two legs
extended out here, parallel, going off to where they ended at the Pillars."
Jennsen could only ask "Why?"
"It seems to me, by how elaborate the whole design was, that the ones
who sealed those people in wanted to give them a way to rid themselves of
dangerous people, possibly knowing from what they had learned of their
beliefs that they would balk at executing anyone. When these people were
banished here to the Old World, they may have already had at least the core
of the same beliefs they hold now. Those beliefs leave them completely
vulnerable to those who are evil. Protecting their way of life, without
executing criminals, meant they had to cast such people out of their
community or be destroyed by them.
"The banishment away from D'Hara and the New World, across the barrier
into the Old World, must have terrified them. They stuck together as a means
of survival, a common bond.
"Those down here in the Old World who put them behind that boundary
must have used those people's fear of persecution to convince them that the
boundary was meant to protect them, to keep others from harming them. They
must have convinced those people that, since they were special, they needed
such protection. That, along with their well-established need to stick
together, had to have reinforced in them a terrible fear of being put out of
their protected place. Banishment had a special terror to those people.
"They must have felt the anguish of being rejected by the rest of the
peoples of the world because they were ungifted, but, together as they were,
they also felt safe behind the boundary.
"Now that the seal is off, we have big problems."
Jennsen folded her arms. "Now that there's more than one of us-- more
than one snowflake--you're having worries about a snowstorm?"
Richard fixed her with a reproachful look. "Why do you think the Order
came in and took some of their people?"
"Apparently," Jennsen said, "to breed more children like them. To breed
precious magic out of the race of man."
Richard ignored the heat in her words. "No, I mean why would they take
men?"
"Same reason," Jennsen said. "To mate with regular women and give them
ungifted children."
Richard drew in a patient breath and let it out slowly. "What did Owen
say? The men were taken to see the women and told that if they didn't follow
orders those women would be skinned alive."
Jennsen hesitated. "What orders?"
Richard leaned toward her. "What orders, indeed. Think about it," he
said, looking around at the rest of them. "What orders? What would they want
ungifted men for? What is it they would want ungifted men to do?"
Kahlan gasped. "The Keep!"
"Exactly." Richard's unsettling gaze met each of them in turn. "Like I
said, we have big problems. Zedd is protecting the Keep. With his ability
and the magic of that place he can no doubt single-handedly hold off
Jagang's entire army.
"But how is that skinny old man going to resist even one young ungifted
man who is untouched by magic and comes up and grabs him by the throat?"
Jennsen's hand came away from her mouth. "You're right, Richard.
Jagang, too, has that book--The Pillars of Creation. He knows how those like
me aren't touched by magic. He tried to use me in that very way. That's why
he worked so hard to convince me that you were trying to kill me--so that I
would think my only chance was to kill you first. He knew I was ungifted and
couldn't be stopped by magic."
"And, Jagang is from the Old World," Richard added. "In all likelihood
he would have known something about the empire beyond that boundary. For all
we know, in the Old World Bandakar might be legendary, while those in the
New World, beyond the great barrier for three thousand years, would never
have known what happened to those people.
"Now, the Order has been taking men from there and threatening them
with the brutal murder of their defenseless women--women who are loved
ones--if those men don't follow orders. I think those orders are to assault
the Wizard's Keep and capture it for the Imperial Order."
Kahlan's legs shook. If the Keep fell, they would lose the one real
advantage, however limited, they had. With the Keep in the hands of the
Order, all those ancient and deadly things of magic would be available to
Jagang. There was no telling what he might unleash. There were things in the
Keep that could kill them all, Jagang included. He had already proven with
the plague he'd unleashed that he was willing to kill any number to have his
way, that he was willing to use any weapon, even if such weapons decimated
his own people as well.
Even if Jagang did nothing with the Keep, just him having control of it
denied the D'Haran Empire the possibility of finding something there that
could help them. That was, in addition to protecting the Keep, what Zedd was
doing while he was there--trying to find something that would help them win
the war, or at least find a way to put the Imperial Order back behind a
barrier of some kind and confine them to the Old World.
Without the Keep, their cause would likely be hopeless. Resistance
would be nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Without the Keep on
their side, all resistance to Jagang would eventually be crushed. His troops
would pour into every part of the New World. There would be no stopping
them.
With trembling fingers Kahlan clutched her cloak closed. She knew what
awaited her people, what it was like when the Imperial Order invaded and
overpowered places. She had been with the army for nearly a year, fighting
against them. They were like a pack of wild dogs. There was no peace with
such animals after you. They would be satisfied only when they could tear
you apart.
Kahlan had been to cities, like Ebinissia, that had been overrun by
Imperial Order soldiers. In a wild binge of savagery that went on for days,
they had tortured, raped, and murdered every person trapped in the city,
finally leaving it a wasteland of human corpses. None, no matter their age,
had been spared.
That was what the people of the New World had to look forward to.
With enemy troops overrunning all of the New World, any trade that was
not already disrupted would be brought to a standstill. Nearly all
businesses would fail. The livelihood of countless people would be lost.
Food would quickly become scarce, and then simply unavailable at any cost.
People would have no means of supporting themselves and their families.
People would lose everything for which they had worked a lifetime.
Cities, even before the troops arrived, would be in a destructive
panic. When the enemy troops arrived, most people would be burned out of
their homes, driven from their cities and their land. Jagang would steal all
supplies of food for his troops and give conquered land to his favored
elite. The true owners of that land would perish, or become slaves working
their own farms. Those who escaped before the invading horde would
desperately cling to life, living like animals in wild areas.
Most of the population would be in flight, running for their lives.
Hundreds of thousands would be out in the elements without shelter. There
would be little food, and no ability to prepare for winter. When the weather
turned harsh, they would perish in droves.
As civilization crumbled and starvation became the norm, disease would
sweep across the land, catching up those on the run. Families would collapse
as those they depended on suffered agonizingly slow and painful deaths.
Children and the weak would be alone, to be preyed upon as a source of food
for the starving.
Kahlan knew what such widespread disease was like. She knew what it was
to watch people dying by the thousands. She had seen it happen in Aydindril
when the plague was there. She saw scores stricken without warning. She had
watched the old, the young--such good people-- contract something they could
not fight, watched them suffer in misery for days before they died.
Richard had been stricken with that plague. Unlike everyone else,
though, he had gotten it knowingly. Taking the plague deliberately had been
the price to get back to her. He had traded his life just to be with her
again before he died.
That had been a time beyond horror.
Kahlan knew, firsthand, savage desperation. It was then that she had
taken the only chance available to her to save his life. It was then that
she had loosed the chimes. That act had saved Richard's life. She hadn't
known at the time that it would also be a catalyst that would set unforeseen
events into motion.
Because of her desperate act, the boundary to this empire had lost its
power and failed. Because of her, all magic might eventually fail.
Now, because of that boundary failing, the Wizard's Keep, their last
bastion to work a solution against the Order, was in terrible jeopardy.
Kahlan felt as if it was all her fault.
The world was on the brink of destruction. Civilization stood at the
threshold of obliteration in the name of the Order's mindless idea of a
greater good. The Order demanded sacrifice to that greater good; what they
were determined to sacrifice was reason, and, therefore, civilization
itself. Madness had cast its shadow across the world and would have them
all.
They now stood in the edge of the shadow of a dark age. They were all
on the eve of the end times.
Kahlan couldn't say that, though. She couldn't tell them how she felt.
She dared not reveal her despair.
"Richard, we simply can't allow the Order to capture the Keep." Kahlan
could hardly believe how calm and determined her voice sounded. She wondered
if anyone else would believe that she thought they still stood a chance. "We
have to stop them."
"I agree," Richard said.
He sounded determined, too. She wondered if he saw in her eyes the true
depths of her despair.
"First," he said, "the easy part: Nicci and Victor. We have to tell
them that we can't come now. Victor needs to know what we would say to him.
He will need to know that we agree with his plans--that he must proceed and
that he can't wait for us. We've talked with him; he knows what to do. Now,
he must do it, and Priska must know that he has to help.
"Nicci needs to know where we're going. She needs to know that we
believe we've discovered the cause of the warning beacon. She has to know
where we are."
He left unsaid that she had to come to help him if he couldn't get to
her because his gift was killing him.
"She needs to know, too," Richard said, "that we only had a chance to
read part of her warning about what Jagang was doing with the Sisters of the
Dark in creating weapons out of people."
Everyone's eyes widened. They hadn't read the letter.
"Well," Kahlan said, "with all the other problems we have, at least
that's one we won't have to deal with for now."
"We have that much on our side," Richard agreed. He gestured to the man
watching, the man waiting for Kahlan to command him. "We'll send him to
Victor and Nicci so they will know everything."
"And then what?" Cara asked.
"I want Kahlan to command him that when he's finished with carrying out
that part of his orders, he's then to go north and find the Imperial Order
army. I want him to pretend to be one of them to get close enough to
assassinate Emperor Jagang."
Kahlan knew how implausible such a scheme was. By the way everyone
stared in astonishment, they had a good idea, too.
"Jagang has layers of men to protect him from assassination," Jenn-sen
said. "He's always surrounded by special guards. Regular soldiers can't even
get close to him."
"Do you really think he has any chance at all to accomplish such a
thing?" Kahlan asked.
"No," Richard admitted. "The Order will most likely kill him before he
can get to Jagang. But he will be driven by the need to fulfill your orders.
He will be single-minded. I expect he will be killed in the effort, but I
also suspect he will at least make a good attempt of it. I want Jagang to at
least lose some sleep knowing that any of his men might be assassins. I want
him to worry that he will never know who might be trying to kill him. I
don't want him ever to be able to sleep soundly. I want him to be haunted by
nightmares of what might be coming next, of who among his men might be
waiting for an opening."
Kahlan nodded her agreement. Richard appraised the grim faces waiting
for the rest of what he had to say.
"Now, to the most important part of what must be done. It's vital we
get to the Keep and warn Zedd. We can't delay. Jagang is ahead of us in all
this--he's been planning and acting and we never realized what he was up to.
We don't know how soon those ungifted men might be sent north. We haven't a
moment to lose."
"Lord Rahl," Cara reminded him, "you have to get to the antidote before
time runs out. You can't go running off to the Keep to ... Oh, no. Now you
just wait a minute--you're not sending me to the Keep again. I'm not leaving
you at a time like this, at a time when you're next to defenseless. I won't
hear of it and I won't go."
Richard laid a hand on her shoulder. "Cara, I'm not sending you, but
thanks for offering."
Cara folded her arms and shot him a fiery scowl.
"We can't take the wagon up into Bandakar--there's no road--"
"Lord Rahl," Tom interrupted, "without magic you'll need all the steel
you have." He sounded only slightly less emphatic than Cara had.
Richard smiled. "I know, Tom, and I agree. It's Friedrich who I think
must go." Richard turned to Friedrich. "You can take the wagon. An older
man, by himself, will raise less suspicion than would any of the rest of us.
They won't see you as a threat. You will be able to make better time with
the wagon and without having to worry that the Order might snatch you and
put you in the army. Will you do it, Friedrich?"
Friedrich scratched his stubble. A smile came to his weathered face. "I
guess I'm at last being called upon to be a boundary warden, of sorts."
Richard smiled with him. "Friedrich, the boundary has failed. As the
Lord Rahl, I appoint you to the post of boundary warden and ask that you
immediately undertake to warn others of the danger come from out of that
boundary."
Friedrich's smile departed as he put a fist to his heart in salute and
solemn pledge.
Somewhere back in a distant room, where his body waited, Nicholas heard
an insistent noise. He was absorbed in the task at hand, so he ignored the
sound. The light was fading, and although light helped to see, darkness
would not hinder eyes such as he used.
Again, he heard the noise. Indignant that the sound kept calling him,
kept annoying him, kept demanding his attention, he returned to his body.
Someone was banging a fist on the door.
Nicholas rose from the floor, where his body sat cross-legged, taking
his body with him. It was always, at first, disorienting to have to be in
his body again, to be so limited, so confined. It felt awkward to have to
move it about, to use his own muscles, to breathe, to see, to hear with his
own senses.
The knock came again. Irate at the interruption, Nicholas went not to
the door but to the windows, and threw the shutters closed. He cast a hand
out, igniting the torch, and finally stalked to the door. Layered strips of
cloth covering his robes flowed out behind, like a heavy mantle of black
feathers.
"What is it!" He threw open the heavy door and peered out.
Najari stood just outside, in the hall, his weight on one foot, his
thumbs hooked behind his belt. His muscular shoulders nearly touched the
walls to each side. Nicholas saw, then, the huddled crowd behind the man.
Najari's crooked nose, flattened to the left in some of the numerous brawls
his temper got him into, cast an oddly shaped shadow across his cheek.
Anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in a brawl with Najari usually
suffered far worse than a mere broken nose.
Najari waggled a thumb over his shoulder. "You asked for some guests,
Nicholas."
Nicholas raked his nails back through his hair, feeling the silken
smooth pleasure of oils gliding against his palm. He rolled his shoulders,
ruffling away his pique.
Nicholas had been so absorbed in what he had been doing that he had
forgotten that he had requested that Najari bring him some bodies.
"Very good, Najari. Bring them in, then. Let's have a look at them."
Nicholas watched as the commander led the gaggle of people into the
flickering torchlight. Soldiers in the rear herded the stragglers through
the door and into the large room. Heads swiveled around, looking at the
strange, stark surroundings, at the wooden walls, the torches in brackets,
the plank flooring, the lack of furniture other than a stout table. Noses
twitched at the sharp smell of blood.
Nicholas watched carefully as people spotted the sharpened stakes
standing in a line along the wall to their right, stakes as thick as
Najari's wrists.
Nicholas studied the people, watching for the telltales of fear as they
spread out along the wall beside the door. Eyes flitted about, worried, and
at the same time eager to take it all in so they could report to their
friends what they had seen inside. Nicholas knew that he was an object of
great curiosity.
A rare being.
A Slide.
No one knew what his name meant. This day, some would learn.
Nicholas glided past the undulating mob. They were a curious people,
these odd, ungifted creatures, curious like mockingbirds, but not nearly so
bold. Because they were without any spark whatsoever of the gift, Nicholas
had to handle them in special ways in order for them to be of any use to
him. It was a bother, but it had its rewards.
Some necks craned in his wake, trying to better see the rare man.
He ran his nails through his hair again just to feel the oils slide
against his hand. As he leaned close to some of the people he passed,
observing individuals in the gathering, one of the women before him closed
her eyes, turning her face away. Nicholas lifted a hand toward her, flicking
out a finger. He glanced to Najari to be sure he saw which one had been
picked.
Najari's gaze flicked from the woman up to Nicholas; he had noted the
selection.
A man back against the wall stood stiff, his eyes wide. Nicholas
flicked a finger at him. Another man twisted his lips in an odd manner.
Nicholas glanced down and saw that the man, in a state of wild fright, had
wet himself. Nicholas's finger flitted out again. Three selected. Nicholas
walked on.
A thin whine escaped the throat of a woman in the front, right before
him. He smiled at her. She peered up, trembling, unable to take her
wide-eyed gaze from him, from his red-rimmed black eyes, unable to halt the
puling sound escaping her throat. She had never seen one so human ... yet
not. Nicholas tapped her shoulder with a long-nailed finger. He would reward
her unspoken revulsion with service to a greater good. His.
Jagang had sought to create something ... unusual, for himself. A
bauble of flesh and blood. A magical trinket crafted from a wizard. A lapdog
... with teeth.
His Excellency had gotten what he wanted, and more. Oh, so much more.
Nicholas would enjoy seeing how the emperor liked having a puppet
without strings, a specially crafted creation with a mind of its own, and
talents to fulfill his wishes.
A man at the rear, against the wall, appeared to be somewhat
uninterested, as if impatient for the exhibition to be over so he could go
back to his own affairs. While none of these people could be said to think
of themselves as important individuals with consequential sway over any
meaningful aspects of life in their empire, a few occasionally exhibited
tendencies, even if inconsistent, toward self-interest. Nicholas flicked his
finger for the fifth time. The man would soon have reason to be highly
interested in the proceedings, and he would find that he was no better than
anyone else. He would be going nowhere--at least not in body.
Everyone stared in silence as Nicholas chuckled alone at his own joke.
His amusement ended. Nicholas tipped his head toward the door in a
single nod. The soldiers jumped into action.
"All right," Najari growled, "move along. Move! Get going. Out, out,
out!"
The feet of the crowd shuffled urgently through the door as ordered.
Some people cast worried glances back over their shoulders at the five
Najari had cut out of the flock. Those five were shoved back when they
sought to stay with the rest. A stiff finger to the chest backed them up as
effectively as would a club or a sword.
"Don't cause any trouble," Najari warned, "or you will be making
trouble for the others."
The five remaining huddled close to one another, rocking nervously side
to side like a covey of quail before a bird dog.
When the soldiers had driven the rest of the people out, Najari closed
the door and stood before it, hands clasped behind his back.
Nicholas returned to the windows, opening the shutters on the west
wall. The sun was down, leaving a red slash across the sky.
Soon they would be on the wing, on the hunt.
Nicholas would be with them.
Casting an arm back without needing to turn to look, he doused the
torch. The flickering light was a distraction during this cusp of time, the
transient twilight that was so fragile, so brief. He would need the light,
but, at the moment, he wanted only to see the sky, to see the glorious,
unbounded sky.
"Are we going to be able to leave soon?" one of the people asked in a
timid squeak.
Nicholas turned and peered at them. Najari's eyes revealed which one
had spoken. Nicholas followed his commander's gaze. It was one of the
men--the one who had been impatient to leave, of course.
"Go?" Nicholas asked as he swept in close to the man. "You wish to go?"
The man stood with his back bent, leaning away from Nicholas.
"Well, sir, I was only wondering when we would be going."
Nicholas stooped in even more, peering deeply into the man's eyes.
"Wonder in silence," he hissed.
Returning to the windows, Nicholas rested his hands on the sill, his
weight on his arms, as he breathed in deeply the gathering night while
taking in the sweep of crimson sky.
Soon, he would be there, be free.
Soon, he would soar as no one else but he could.
Impulsively, he sought them.
Eyes bulging with the effort, he cast his senses where none but his
could go.
"There!" he screeched, throwing his arm out, pointing a long black nail
at what none but he could see. "There! One has taken to wing."
Nicholas spun around, strips of cloth lifting, floating up. Panting
through a rush of fluttering excitement, he gazed at the eyes staring at
him. They could not know. They could not understand one such as he,
understand what he felt, what he needed. He hungered to be on the hunt, to
be with them, ever since he had imagined such a use for his ability.
He had reveled in the experience, dedicating himself to it as he
learned his new abilities. He had been off with those glorious creatures as
often as he could afford the time, ever since he had come here and
discovered them.
How ironic it now seemed that he had resisted. How odd that he once had
feared what those gruesome women, those Sisters of the Dark, had conspired
to do to him ... what they had done to him.
His duty, they had called it.
Their vile magic had cut like a red-hot blade through him. He had
thought his eyes might burst from his head from the pain that had seared
through him. Tied spread-eagled to stakes in the ground in the center of
their wicked circle, he had dreaded what they were going to do to him.
He had feared it.
Nicholas smiled.
Hated it, even.
He had been afraid because of the pain, the pain of what they were
doing to him, and the even greater pain of not knowing what more they
intended to do to him. His duty, they had called it, to a greater good. His
ability bore responsibilities, they had insisted.
He watched through glazed eyes as Najari bound the hands of the five
people behind each of their backs.
"Thank you, Najari," he said when the man had finished.
Najari approached. "The men will have them by now, Nicholas. I told
them to send enough men to insure that they would not escape." Najari
grinned at the prospect. "There's no need to worry. They should all be on
their way back to us."
Nicholas narrowed his eyes. "We will see. We will see."
He wanted to see it himself. With his own vision--even if his own
vision was through another's eyes.