Страница:
Midlands with magic. They may not have been born with the gift, but they had
worked a lifetime to become wizards. They were wizards," she insisted.
Richard's mouth turned up with the kind of smile that told her that she
had just framed the essence of his argument for him. "But they had not been
born with that aspect, that attribute, of the gift." He leaned toward her.
"Zedd, besides training them, must have used magic to help them become
wizards, right?"
Kahlan frowned at the thought. "I don't know. They never told me about
their training to become wizards. That was never germane to their
relationship with me or my training."
"But Zedd has Additive Magic," Richard pressed. "Additive can change
things, add to them, make them more than they are."
"All right," Kahlan cautiously agreed. "What's the point?"
"The point is that Zedd took people who weren't born with the gift to
be wizards and he trained them but--more importantly--he must have also used
his power to help them along that path by altering how they were born. He
had to have added to their gift to make them more than they were born to
be." Richard glanced over at her as his horse stepped around a small,
scraggly pine. "He altered people with magic."
Kahlan let out a deep breath as she looked away from Richard and ahead
at the gentle spread of grassy hills to either side of them, as she tried to
fully grasp the concept of what he was saying.
"I never considered that before, but all right," she finally said. "So,
what of it?"
"We thought that only the wizards of old could do such a thing, but,
apparently, it's not a lost art nor would it be entirely so far-fetched as I
had imagined for the wizards back then to believe they could change what
was, into what they thought it ought to be. What I'm saying is that, like
what Zedd did to give people that with which they were not born, so too did
the wizards of old try to give people born as pillars of Creation a spark of
the gift."
Kahlan felt a chill of realization. The implication was staggering. Not
just the wizards of old, but Zedd, too, had used magic to alter the very
nature of people, the very nature of what they were, how they were born.
She supposed that he had only helped them to achieve what was their
greatest ambition in life--their calling--by enhancing what they already had
been born with. He helped them to reach their full potential. But that was
for men who had the innate potential. While the wizards of long ago probably
had done similar things to help people, they had also sometimes used their
power for less benevolent reasons.
"So," he said, "the wizards back then, who were experienced in altering
people's abilities, thought that these people called the pillars of Creation
could be cured."
"Cured of not having been born gifted," she said in a flat tone of
incredulity.
"Not exactly. They weren't trying to make them into wizards, but they
thought they could at least be cured of not having that infinitesimal spark
of the gift that simply enabled them to interact with magic."
Kahlan took a purging breath. "So then what happened?"
"This book was written after the great war had ended--after the barrier
had been created and the Old World had been sealed away. It was written
after the New World was at peace, or, at least, after the barrier kept the
Old World contained.
"But remember what we found out before? That we think that during the
war Wizard Ricker and his team had done something to halt Sub-tractive
Magic's ability to be passed on to the offspring of wizards? Well, after the
war, those born with the gift started becoming increasingly uncommon, and
those who were being born were being born without the Subtractive side."
"So, after the war," she said, "those who were born with the gift of
both Additive and Subtractive were rapidly becoming nonexistent. We already
knew that."
"Right." Richard leaned toward her and lifted the book. "But then, when
there are fewer wizards being born, all of a sudden the wizards additionally
realize that they have all these pristinely ungifted--breaks altogether in
the link to magic--on their hands. Suddenly, on top of the problem of the
birth rate of those with the gift to be wizards dropping, they were faced
with what they called pillars of Creation."
Kahlan swayed in the saddle as she thought about it, trying to imagine
the situation at the Keep at the time. "I can see that they would have been
pretty concerned."
His voice lowered meaningfully. "They were desperate."
Kahlan laid her reins over, moving in behind Richard as his horse
stepped around an ancient, fallen tree that had been bleached silver from
the sweltering sun.
"So, I suppose," Kahlan asked as she walked her horse back up beside
him, "that the wizards started to do the same thing Zedd did? Trained those
who had the calling--those who wished to be wizards but had not been born
with the gift?"
"Yes, but back then," Richard said, "they trained those with only
Additive to be able to use the Subtractive, too, like full wizards of the
time. As time went on, though, even that was being lost to them, and they
were only able to do what Zedd did--train men to be wizards but they could
only wield Additive Magic.
"But that isn't really what the book is about," Richard said as he
gestured dismissively. "That was just a side point to record what they had
attempted. They started out with confidence. They thought that these pillars
of Creation could be cured of being pristinely ungifted, much like wizards
with only Additive could be trained to use both sides of the magic, and
those without the gift for wizardry could be made wizards able to use at
least the Additive side of it."
The way he used his hands when he talked reminded her of the way Zedd
did when he became worked up. "They tried to modify the very nature of how
these people had been born. They tried to take people without any spark of
the gift, and alter them in a desperate attempt to give them the ability to
interact with magic. They weren't just adding or enhancing, they were trying
to create something out of nothing."
Kahlan didn't like the sound of that. They knew that in those ancient
times the wizards had great power, and they altered people with the gift,
manipulated their gift, to suit a specific purpose.
They created weapons out of people.
In the great war, Jagang's ancestors were one such weapon: dream
walkers. Dream walkers were created to be able to take over the minds of
people in the New World and control them. Out of desperation, the bond of
the Lord Rahl was created to counter that weapon, to protect a people from
the dream walkers.
Any number of human weapons were conjured from the gifted. Such changes
were often profound, and they were irrevocable. At times, the creations were
monsters of boundless cruelty. From this heritage, Ja-gang had been born.
During that great war, one of the wizards who had been put on trial for
treason refused to reveal what damage he had done. When even torture failed
to gain the man's confession, the wizards conducting the trial turned to the
talents of a wizard named Merritt and ordered the creation of a Confessor.
Magda Searus, the first Confessor, extracted the man's confession. The
tribunal was so pleased with the results of Wizard Merritt's conjuring that
they commanded that an order of Confessors be created.
Kahlan felt no different than other people felt, she was no less human,
no less a woman, loved life no less, but her Confessor's power was the
result of that conjuring. She, too, was a descendant of women altered to be
weapons--in this case weapons designed to find the truth.
"What's the matter?" Richard asked.
She glanced over and saw the look of concern on his face. Kahlan forced
a smile and shook her head that it was nothing.
"So what is it that you discovered by jumping ahead in the book?"
Richard took a deep breath as he folded his hands over the pommel of
the saddle. "Essentially, they were attempting to use color in order to help
people born without eyes ... to see."
From Kahlan's understanding of magic and of history, this was
fundamentally different from even the most malevolent experiments to alter
people into weapons. Even in the most vile of these instances, they were
attempting to take away some attribute of their humanity and at the same
time add to or enhance an elemental ability. In none of it were they trying
to create that which was not there at all.
"In other words," Kahlan summed up, "they failed."
Richard nodded. "So, here they were, the great war was long over and
the Old World--those who had wanted to end magic, much like the Imperial
Order--was safely sealed away beyond the barrier that had been created. Now
they find out that the birth rate of those carrying the gift of wizardry is
plummeting, and that the magic engendered by the House of Rahl, the bond
with his people designed to stop the dream walkers from taking them, has an
unexpected consequence--it also gives birth to the pristinely ungifted, who
are an irreversible break in the lineage of magic."
"They have two problems, then," Kahlan said. "They have fewer wizards
being born to deal with problems of magic, and they have people being born
with no link at all to the magic."
"That's right. And the second problem was growing faster than the
first. In the beginning, they thought they would find a solution, a cure.
They didn't. Worse, as I explained before, those born of the pristinely
ungifted, like Jennsen, always bear children the same as they. In a few
generations, the number of the people without the link to the gift was
growing faster than anyone ever expected."
Kahlan let out a deep breath. "Desperate indeed."
"It was becoming chaos."
She hooked a loose strand of hair back. "What did they decide?"
Richard regarded her with one of those looks that told her he was
pretty disturbed by what he'd found.
"They chose magic over people. They deemed that this attribute-- magic,
or those who possessed it--was more important than human life." His voice
rose. "Here they took the very thing they fought the war over, the right of
those who were born the way they were--in that case people born with
magic--to their own lives, to exist, and they turned it all around to be
that this attribute was more important than the life which held it!"
He let out a breath and lowered his voice. "There were too many to
execute, so they did the next best thing--they banished them."
Kahlan's eyebrows went up. "Banished them? To where?"
Richard leaned toward her with fire in his eyes. "The Old World."
"What!"
Richard shrugged, as if speaking on behalf of the wizards back then,
mocking their reasoning. "What else could they do? They could hardly execute
them; they were friends and family. Many of those normal people with the
spark of the gift--but who were not gifted as wizards or sorceresses and so
didn't think of themselves as gifted--had sons, daughters, brothers,
sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors who had married these pristinely
ungifted, these pillars of Creation. They were part of society--a society
which was less and less populated by the truly gifted.
"In a society where they were increasingly outnumbered and mistrusted,
the ruling gifted couldn't bring themselves to put all these tainted people
to death."
"You mean they even considered it?"
Richard's eyes told her that they had and what he thought of the
notion. "But in the end, they couldn't. At the same time, after trying
everything, they now realized that they couldn't ever restore the link to
magic once it was broken by these people, and such people were marrying and
having children, and the children were marrying and having children--who in
every case passed along this taint. And, those so tainted were increasing in
numbers faster than anyone had imagined.
"As far as the gifted were concerned, their very world was threatened,
in much the same way it had been threatened by the war. That was, after all,
what those in the Old World had been trying to do-- destroy magic--and here
it was, the very thing they feared, happening.
"They couldn't repair the damage, they couldn't stop it from spreading,
and they couldn't put to death all those among them. At the same time, with
the taint multiplying, they knew that they were running out of time. So,
they settled on what to them was the only way out-- banishment."
"And they could cross the barrier?" she asked.
"Those with the gift, for all practical purposes, were prevented from
crossing the barrier, but for those who were pillars of Creation, magic did
not exist; they were unaffected by it, so, to them, the barrier was not an
obstacle."
"How could those in charge be sure they had all the pillars of
Creation? If any escaped, the banishment would fail to solve their problem."
"Those with the gift--wizards and sorceresses--can somehow recognize
those pristinely ungifted for what they are: holes in the world, as Jennsen
said those like her were called. The gifted can see them, but not sense them
with their gift. Apparently, it wasn't a problem to know who the pillars of
Creation were."
"Can you tell any difference?" Kahlan asked. "Can you sense Jennsen as
being different? Being a hole in the world?"
"No. But I've not been taught to use my ability. How about you?"
Kahlan shook her head. "I'm not a sorceress, so I guess that I don't
have the ability to detect those like her." She shifted her weight in her
saddle. "So, what happened with those people back then?"
"The people of the New World collected all those ungifted offspring of
the House of Rahl and their every single last descendant, and sent the whole
lot of them across the great barrier, to the Old World, where the people had
professed that they wanted mankind to be free of magic."
Richard smiled with the irony, even of such a grim event as this. "The
wizards of the New World, in essence, gave their enemy in the Old World
exactly what they professed to want, what they had been fighting for:
mankind without magic."
His smile withered. "Can you imagine deciding that we had to banish
Jennsen and send her into some fearful unknown, simply because of the fact
that she can't see magic?"
Kahlan shook her head as she tried to envision such a time. "What a
horror, to be uprooted and sent away, especially to the enemy of your own
people."
Richard rode in silence for a time. Finally, he went on with the story.
"It was a terrifying event for those banished, but it was also traumatic
almost beyond endurance to those who were left. Can you even imagine what it
must have been like. All those friends and relatives suddenly ripped out of
your life, your family? The disruption to trade and livelihood?" Richard's
words came with bitter finality. "All because they decided some attribute
was more important than human life."
Just listening to the story, Kahlan felt as if she had been through an
ordeal. She watched Richard riding beside her, staring off, lost in his own
thoughts.
"Then what?" she finally asked. "Did they ever hear from those who were
banished?"
He shook his head. "No, nothing. They were now beyond the great
barrier. They were gone."
Kahlan stroked her horse's neck, just to feel the comfort of something
alive. "What did they do about those who were born after that?"
Still he stared off. "Killed them."
Kahlan swallowed in revulsion. "I can't imagine how they could do
that."
"They could tell, once the child was born, if it was ungifted. It was
said to be easier then, before it was named."
Kahlan couldn't find her voice for a moment. "Still," she said in a
weak voice, "I can't imagine it."
"It's no different from what Confessors did about the birth of male
Confessors."
His words cut through her. She hated the memory of those times. Hated
the memory of a male child being born to a Confessor. Hated the memory of
them being put to death by command of the mother.
There was said to be no choice. Male Confessors in the past had had no
self-control over their power. They became monsters, started wars, caused
unimaginable suffering.
It was argued that there was no choice but to put a male child of a
Confessor to death, before they were named.
Kahlan couldn't force herself to look up into Richard's eyes. The witch
woman, Shota, had foretold that she and Richard would conceive a male child.
Neither Kahlan nor Richard would ever for an instant consider harming any
child of theirs, a child resulting from their love for one another, from
their love of life. She couldn't imagine putting a child of theirs to death
for being born a male child of her as a Confessor, or an ungifted male or
female child of Richard for being a Rahl. How could anyone say that such a
life had no right to exist because of who they were, what they were like, or
what they might possibly become.
"Somewhere along the line after this book was written," Richard said in
a quiet voice, "things changed. When this book was written, the Lord Rahl of
D'Hara always married, and they knew when he produced an offspring. When the
child was pristinely ungifted, they ended its life as mercifully as they
could.
"At some point, ruling wizards of the House of Rahl became like Darken
Rahl. They took any woman they wanted, whenever they wanted. The details,
such as if an ungifted child born of those couplings was actually a pillar
of Creation, became unimportant to them. They simply killed any offspring,
except the gifted heir."
"But they were wizards--they could have told which ones were like that
and at least not killed the rest."
"If they wanted, I suppose they could have, but, like Darken Rahl,
their only interest was in the single gifted heir. They simply killed the
rest."
"So, such offspring hid for fear of their life and one managed to
escape the grasp of Darken Rahl until you killed him first. And so you have
a sister, Jennsen."
Richard's smile returned. "And so I do."
Kahlan followed his gaze and saw distant specks, black-tipped races,
watching, as they soared on the updrafts of the high cliffs of the mountains
to the east.
She took a purging breath of the hot, humid air. "Richard, those
ungifted offspring that were banished to the Old World, do you think they
survived?"
"If the wizards in the Old World didn't slaughter them."
"But everyone down here in the Old World is the same as in the New
World. I've fought against the soldiers from here--with Zedd and the Sisters
of the Light. We used magic of every sort to try to halt the Order's
advance. I can tell you firsthand that all those from the Old World are
affected by magic, so that means they all are born with that spark of the
gift. There are no broken links in the chain of magic in the Old World."
"From everything I've seen down here, I'd have to agree."
Kahlan wiped sweat from her brow. It was running into her eyes. "So
what happened to those banished people?"
Richard gazed off toward the mountains beneath the races. "I can't
imagine. But it must have been horrifying for them."
"So you think that maybe that was the end of them? That maybe they
perished, or were put to death?"
He regarded her with a sidelong glance. "I don't know. But what I'd
like to know is why that place back there is named the same as they were
called in this book: the Pillars of Creation." His eyes took on a menacing
gleam. "And far worse yet, I'd like to know why, as Jennsen told us, a copy
of this book is among Jagang's most prized possessions."
That troublesome thought had been running through Kahlan's mind as
well.
She looked up at him from beneath a frown. "Maybe you shouldn't have
skipped ahead in your reading of the book, Lord Rahl."
Richard's fleeting smile wasn't all she'd hoped for. "I'll be relieved
if that's the biggest mistake I've made, lately."
"What do you mean?"
He raked his hair back. "Is anything different about your Confessor's
power?"
"Different?" Almost involuntarily, his question caused her to draw
back, to focus inwardly, to take stock of the force she always felt within
herself. "No. It feels the same as always."
The power coiled in the core of her being did not need to be summoned
when there was need of it. As always, it was there at the ready; it only
required that she release her restraint of it for it to be unleashed.
"There's something wrong with the sword," he said, catching her by
surprise. "Wrong with its power."
Kahlan couldn't imagine what to make of such a notion. "How can you
tell? What's different?"
Richard idly stroked his thumbs along the reins turned back over his
fingers. "It's hard to define exactly what's different. I'm just used to the
feeling of it being at my beck and call. It responds when I need it, but for
some reason it seems to be hesitant about doing so."
Kahlan felt that now, more than ever, they needed to get back to
Aydindril and see Zedd. Zedd was the keeper of the sword. Even though they
couldn't take the sword through the sliph, Zedd would be able to give them
insight about any nuance of its power. He would know what to do. He would be
able to help Richard with the headaches, too.
And Kahlan knew that Richard needed help. She could see that he wasn't
himself. His gray eyes held a glaze of pain, but there was something more
etched in his expression, in the way he moved, the way he carried himself.
The whole explanation of the book and what he had discovered seemed to
have sapped his strength.
She was beginning to think that it wasn't she, after all, who was the
one running out of time, but that it was Richard. That thought, despite the
warm afternoon sun, sent cold terror racing through her.
Richard checked the others over his shoulder. "Let's go back to the
wagon. I need to get something warmer to put on. It's freezing today."
114
Zedd peered up the deserted street. He could have sworn that he saw
someone. Using his gift to search for any sign of life told him that there
was no one anywhere around. Still, he remained motionless as he stared.
The warm breeze pressed his simple robes against his bony frame and
gently ruffled his disheveled white hair. A tattered, sun-faded blue dress
that someone had pinned to a second-floor balcony railing to dry flapped
like a flag in the wind. The dress, along with a city full of personal
possessions, had long ago been left behind.
The buildings, their walls painted various colors from a rusty red to
yellow with shutters in bright, contrasting hues, stuck out to slightly
varying degrees on either side of the narrow cobbled street, making a canyon
of colorful walls. Most of the second stories overhung the bottom floors by
a few feet, and, with their eaves hanging out even more, the buildings
closed off the better part of the sky except for a snaking slit of afternoon
sunlight that followed the sinuous course of the street up and over the
gentle hill. The doors were all tightly shut, most of the windows shuttered.
A pale green gate to an alleyway hung open, squeaking as it swung to and fro
in the breeze.
Zedd decided that it must have been a trick of the light that he'd
seen, maybe a windowpane that had moved in the wind sending a flicker of
light across a wall.
When he was at last sure that he had been mistaken about seeing anyone,
Zedd started back down the street, yet remained close to one side, walking
as quietly as possible. The Imperial Order army had not returned to the city
since Zedd had unleashed the light web that had killed an enormous number of
their force, but that didn't mean that there couldn't be dangers about.
No doubt Emperor Jagang still wanted the city, and especially the Keep,
but he was no fool and he knew that a few more light webs ignited among his
army, no matter how vast it was, would in that instant reduce his force by
such staggering numbers that it could alter the course of the war. Jagang
had fought against the Midland and D'Haran forces for a year and in all
those battles he had not lost as many men as he'd lost in that one blinding
moment. He would not casually risk another such event.
After such a blow Jagang would want to capture the Keep more than he
had ever wanted it before. He would want Zedd more than ever before.
Had Zedd more of the light webs like the one his frantic search through
the Keep had turned up, he would have already unleashed them all on the
Order. He sighed. If only he had more.
Still, Jagang didn't know that he had no more such constructed spells.
As long as Jagang feared that there were more, it served Zedd's purpose in
keeping the Imperial Order out of Aydindril and away from the Wizard's Keep.
Some harm had been done to the Confessors' Palace when Jagang had been
gulled into attacking, but Zedd judged that trying that trick had been worth
the regrettable damage; it had almost netted him and Adie the emperor's
hide. Damage could always be repaired. He vowed that it would be repaired.
Zedd clenched a fist at how close he had come to finishing Jagang that
day. At least he had dealt a mighty blow to his army.
And Zedd might have had Jagang had it not been for that strange young
woman. He shook his head at the memory of actually seeing one who could not
be touched by magic. He'd known, in theory, of their existence, but had
never before known it for certain to be true. Vague references in old books
made for interesting abstract speculation, but seeing it with his own eyes
was quite something else.
It had been an unsettling sight. Adie had been shaken by the encounter
even more than he; she was blind, yet with the aid of the gift could see
better than he could. That day, she had not been able to see the young woman
who was there, but, in some ways, not there. To Zedd's eyes, if not his
gift, she was a beautiful sight, with some of Darken Rahl's looks, but
different and altogether captivating. That she was half sister to Richard
was clear; she shared some of his features, especially the eyes. If only
Zedd could have stopped her, kept her out of the way, convinced her that she
was making a terrible mistake by being with the Order, or even if he could
have killed her, Jagang would not have escaped justice.
Still, Zedd held no illusions about ending the threat of the Imperial
Order simply by killing Jagang. Jagang was merely the brute who led other
brutes in enforcing blind faith in the Order, a blind faith that embraced
death as salvation from what it preached was the corrupt misery of life, a
blind faith in which life itself had no value but as a bloody sacrifice upon
the altar of altruism, a blind faith that blamed the failure of its own
ideas on mankind for being wicked and for failing to offer sufficient
sacrifice in an endless quest for some illusive greater good that grew ever
more distant, a blind faith in an Order that clung to power by feeding off
the carcasses of the productive lives it ruined.
A faith that by its very beliefs rejected reason and embraced the
irrational could not long endure without intimidation and force-- without
brutes like Jagang to enforce such faith.
While Emperor Jagang was brutally effective, it was a mistake to think
that if Jagang were to die that very day it would end the threat of the
Order. It was the Order's ideas that were so dangerous; the priests of the
Order would find other brutes.
The only real way to end the Order's reign of terror was to expose the
naked evil of its teachings to the light of truth, and for those suffering
under its doctrines to throw off the Order's yoke. Until then, they would
have to fight the Imperial Order back as best they could, hoping at least to
eventually contain them.
Zedd poked his head around a corner, watching, listening, sniffing the
wind for any trace of anyone who might be lurking about. The city was
deserted, but on a number of occasions stray Imperial Order soldiers had
wandered in out of the mountains.
After the destruction caused by the light web, panic had swept through
the Order's encampment. Many soldiers had scattered to the hills. Once the
army had regrouped, a large number of men had decided to desert instead of
returning to their units. Tens of thousands of such deserters were rounded
up and executed, their bodies left to rot as a warning of what happened to
those who abandoned the cause of the greater glory of the Imperial Order, or
as the Order liked to put it, the cause of the greater good. Most of the
rest of the men who had run to the hills had then had a change of heart and
straggled back into camp.
There were still some, though, who had not wanted to go back and had
not been caught. For a time, after Jagang's army had moved on, they had
wandered into the city, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, half
starved, to search for food and to loot. Zedd had lost count of how many
such men he had killed.
He was reasonably sure that all of those stragglers were dead, now. The
Order was made up of men mostly from cities and towns. Such men weren't used
to living in the wild. Their job was to overwhelm the enemy, to kill, rape,
terrorize, and plunder. A whole corps of logistics personnel provided them
with support, delivering and dispensing a constant stream of supplies that
rolled in to feed and care for the soldiers. They were violent men, but they
were men who needed to be tended, who depended on the group for their
survival. They didn't last long on their own in the trackless forested
mountains surrounding Ay-dindril.
But Zedd hadn't seen any of them for quite some time. He was reasonably
sure that the stragglers had starved, been killed, or had long ago headed
back south, to the Old World.
There was always the possibility, though, that Jagang had sent
assassins to Aydindril; some of those assassins could be Sisters of the
Light, or worse, Sisters of the Dark. For that reason, Zedd rarely left the
safety of the Keep, and when he did, he was cautious. Too, he hated poking
around the city, seeing it so devoid of life. This had been his home for
much of his life. He remembered the days when the Keep was a hub of
activity--not as it once had been, he knew, but alive with people of all
sorts. He found himself smiling at the memory.
His smile faded. Now the city was a joyless sight, forlorn without
people filling the streets, people talking from one balcony to a neighbor
across the street in another window, people gathering to trade goods in the
market. Not so long ago men would have stopped to have conversations in
doorways while vendors pulled carts of their wares along the narrow streets
and children at play skipped through the throngs. Zedd sighed at the sad
sight of such lifeless streets.
At least those lives were safe, if a long way from home. Although he
had many fundamental differences with the Sisters of the Light, he knew that
their Prelate, Verna, and the rest of the free Sisters would watch over
them.
The only problem was that now that Jagang had nothing in Aydindril of
any real value to conquer except the Keep, and much to lose, he had wheeled
his army east toward the remnants of the Midland forces. To be sure, the
D'Haran army waited across those mountains to the east and Zedd knew how
formidable they were, but he couldn't fool himself that they stood a chance
against a force as immense as the Imperial Order.
Jagang had left the city in order to go after those D'Haran forces. The
Imperial Order could not win the war by occupying an empty city; they needed
to crush any resistance once and for all so that there would be no people
left who could, by living prosperous, happy, peaceful lives, put the lie to
the Order's teachings.
Now that Jagang had come all the way up through the Midlands, he had
cleaved the New World. Forces had been left all along the route to occupy
cities and towns. Now the main force of the Order would turn its blood lust
east, on a lone D'Hara. By dividing the New World in such a way, Jagang
would be able to more efficiently crush opposition.
Zedd knew that it wasn't for lack of trying that the New World had
given ground. He and Kahlan, among a great many others, had worked
themselves sick, month after month, trying to find a way to stop Ja-gang's
forces.
Zedd clutched his robes at his throat, at the painful memory of such
ferocious fighting, at how nothing had worked against Jagang's numbers, at
the death and dying, at the friends he had lost. It was only a matter of
time until all was lost to the hordes from the Old World.
Richard and Kahlan would not survive such a conquest by the Imperial
Order. Zedd's thin fingers covered his trembling lips at the ghastly thought
of them being lost, too. They were the only family he had left. They were
everything to him.
Zedd felt a crushing wave of hopelessness, and had to sit on the stump
of a log section set outside a shoe shop that had been boarded closed. Once
the Imperial Order finally annihilated all opposition, Ja-gang would return
to take the city and lay siege to the Keep. Sooner or later, he would have
it all.
The future, as Zedd imagined it, seemed to be a world shrouded in the
gray pall of life under the Imperial Order. If the world fell under that
pall, it would probably be a very long time before mankind ever emerged to
live free again. Once liberty was surrendered to tyranny, it could be
smothered for centuries before its flames again sprang to life and
brightened the world.
Zedd hadn't sat for long when he forced himself to his feet. He was
First Wizard. He had been in hopeless straits before and had seen the foe
turned back. There was still the possibility that he and Adie could find
something in the Keep that would aid them, or that they might yet discover
information in the libraries that would give them a valuable advantage.
As long as there was life, they could fight on toward their goal. They
still had the ability to triumph.
He harrumphed to himself. He would triumph.
Zedd was glad that Adie wasn't with him to see him in such a sorry
state that he would have--if even momentarily--considered defeat. Adie would
have never let him hear the end of it, and deservedly so.
He harrumphed again. He was hardly inexperienced, hardly without the
wherewithal to handle challenges that arose. And if there were assassins
about, gifted or not, they would find themselves caught up by one of the
many little surprises he had left around. Very nasty surprises.
Chin up, Zedd smiled to himself as he turned down a narrow alley,
making his way past a patchwork of yards with empty pens that had once held
chickens, geese, ducks, and pigeons. His gaze passed over small back
courtyards, their herbs and flowers growing untended, their wash lines
empty, their wood and other materials stacked to the sides, waiting for
people to return and work them into something useful.
Along the way he stopped in various vegetable gardens, harvesting the
volunteer crops that had sprung up. There was lettuce aplenty, spinach, some
small squash, green tomatoes, and still a few peas. He collected his bounty
in a canvas sack and slung it over a shoulder as he walked the garden plots,
checking on the progress of irregular patches of onions, beets, beans, and
turnips. Still some growing to do, he concluded.
While the vegetables weren't thick from a careful planting, the random
growth in yards all over the city meant that he and Adie would have fresh
vegetables for some time to come. Maybe she might even take to putting some
things up for next winter. They could store root crops in the colder places
in the Keep, and preserve more perishable vegetables. They would have more
food than they could eat.
On his way up the alley, Zedd spied a bush off toward the corner,
sprawled green and lush over a short back fence between two homes. The
blackberry bush was loaded with ripe berries. He paused occasionally to
check up and down the streets beyond while he made a nice-sized pile of the
dark, plump berries in a square of cloth, then tied it up and placed it atop
the heavier goods in his sack.
There were still plenty of ripe berries, and he hated to let them go to
waste, or to the birds, so he worked at filling his pockets. He didn't worry
that it would spoil his dinner; it was a long walk back up the mountain to
the Wizard's Keep, so he could use a snack. Adie was making a thick stew
from cured ham. There was no danger that he would spoil his appetite on mere
berries. She would be pleased by the vegetables he brought and would no
doubt want to add them to the stew straightaway. Adie was a wonderful cook,
although he dared not admit it to her lest she get a big head. Before the
stone bridge, Zedd paused, gazing back down the wide road leading up the
mountainside. Only the wind in the trees and their shimmering leaves created
any sound or movement. For a long moment, though, he stared down at the
empty road.
Finally, he turned back to the bridge that in less than three hundred
paces spanned a chasm with near vertical sides dropping away for thousands
of feet. Clouds far below hung hard against the sheer rock walls. Despite
the countless times he had walked over the stone bridge, it still made him
feel just a little queasy. Without wings, though, there was but this single
way into the Keep--except for the little trick passage he had used as a boy.
Because of their strategic role, Zedd had placed enough snares and
traps along the bridge and the rest of the road up to the Keep that no one
was going to live for more than a few paces once they came close. Not even a
Sister of the Dark could trespass here. A few Sisters had attempted the
impossible, and had paid with their lives.
They would have suspected such webs laid by the First Wizard himself,
and felt some of the warning shields, but no doubt Jagang had given them no
choice in the matter and had sent them to attempt entry, sacrificing their
lives for the greater good of the Order.
Verna had once briefly been taken captive by the dream walker and she
had told Zedd all about the experience in the hope that they might find a
counter, other than swearing loyalty in one's heart to the Lord Rahl and
thereby invoking the protection of the bond. Zedd had tried, but there was
no countermagic he could provide. In the great war, wizards far more
talented than he, and with both sides of the gift, had tried to devise
defenses against dream walkers. Once the dream walker had taken over a
person's mind, there was no defense; you had to do his bidding, regardless
of the cost, even if the cost was your life.
Zedd suspected that for a few, death was a coveted release from the
agony of possession by the dream walker. Suicide was a course blocked by
Jagang; he needed the talents of the Sisters and other gifted. He couldn't
have them all kill themselves for release from the misery of life as his
chattel. But if he sent them to their certain death, such as attempting to
enter the Keep, then they could at last be free of the agony that had become
their life.
Ahead, the Keep towered on the mountainside. The soaring walls of dark
stone, intimidating to most people, offered Zedd the warm sense of home. His
eyes roamed the ramparts, and he remembered strolling there with his wife so
many years ago--a lifetime ago, it seemed. From the towers he had often
looked down at the beautiful sight of Aydindril below. He had once marched
across the bridges and passageways to deliver orders defending the Midlands
from an invasion from D'Hara, led by Darken Rahl's father.
That, too, seemed a lifetime ago. Now Richard, his grandson, was the
Lord Rahl, and had succeeded in uniting most of the Midlands under the rule
of the D'Haran Empire. Zedd shook his head at the wonder of it, at the
thought of how Richard had changed everything. By Richard's hand, Zedd was
now a subject of the D'Haran Empire. What a wonder indeed.
Before he reached the far side of the bridge, Zedd glanced down into
the chasm. Movement caught his attention. Putting his bony fingers on the
rough stone, he leaned out a little for a look. Below, but above the clouds,
he saw two huge birds, black as moonless midnight, gliding along through the
split in the mountain. Zedd had never seen the like of them. He couldn't
imagine what to make of the sight.
When he turned back to the Keep, he thought he saw three more of the
same kind of large black birds flying together, high above the Keep. He
decided that they had to be ravens. Ravens were big. He must simply be
misjudging the distance--probably from lack of food. Concluding that they
had to be ravens, he tried to adjust his estimation of their distance, but
they were already gone. He glanced down, but didn't see the other two,
either.
As he passed under the iron portcullis, feeling the warm embrace of the
Keep's spell, Zedd felt a wave of loneliness. He so missed Erilyn, his
long-dead wife, as well as his long-passed daughter, Richard's mother, and,
dear spirits, he missed Richard. He smiled then, thinking of Richard being
with his own wife, now. It was still sometimes hard for him to think of
Richard as grown into a man. He had had a wondrous time helping to raise
Richard. What a time that had been in his life, off in Westland, away from
the Midlands, away from magic and responsibility, with just that ever
curious boy and a whole world of wonders to explore and show him.
What a time indeed. Inside the Keep, lamps along the wall obediently
sprang to flame as First Wizard Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander made his way along
passageways and through grand rooms, deeper into the immense mountain
fortress. As he passed the webs he'd placed, he checked the texture of their
magic to find that they were undisturbed. He sighed in relief. He didn't
expect that anyone would be foolish enough to try to enter the Keep, but the
world had fools to spare. He didn't really like leaving such dangerous webs
cast all about the place, in addition to the often dangerous shields already
guarding the Keep, but he dared not relax his guard.
As he passed a long side table in a towering gathering hall, Zedd, as
he had done since he was a boy, ran his finger along the smooth groove in
the edge of the variegated chocolate-brown marble top. He stopped, frowning
down at the table, and realized that it contained something he suddenly felt
the want of: a ball of fine black cord left there years ago to tie ribbons
and other decorations on the lamp brackets in the gathering hall to mark the
harvest festival.
Sure enough, in the center drawer, he found the ball of fine cord. He
snatched it up and slipped it into a pocket long emptied of its load of
berries. From the wall bracket beside the table, he lifted a wand with six
small bells. The wand, one of hundreds if not thousands throughout the Keep,
was once used to summon servants. He sighed inwardly. It had been decades
since servants and their families last lived in the Wizard's Keep. He
remembered their children running and playing in the halls. He remembered
the joy of laughter echoing throughout the Keep, bringing life to the place.
Zedd told himself that one day children would again run and laugh in
the halls. Richard and Kahlan's children. Zedd's broad smile stretched his
cheeks.
There were windows and openings in the stone that let light spill into
many halls and rooms, but there were other places less well lit. Zedd found
one of those darker places that was dim enough to satisfy him. He stretched
a piece of the black cord, strung with one of the bells, across the doorway,
winding it around coarse stone molding to each side. Moving deeper through
the labyrinth of halls and passage-ways, he stopped and strung more strings
with a bell at places where it would be hard to see. He had to collect
several more of the servant wands for a supply of bells.
Although there were shields of magic laced everywhere, there was no
telling what powers some of the Sisters of the Dark possessed. They would be
looking for magic, not bells. It couldn't hurt to take the extra precaution.
Zedd made mental notes of where he strung the fine black cord-- he
worked a lifetime to become wizards. They were wizards," she insisted.
Richard's mouth turned up with the kind of smile that told her that she
had just framed the essence of his argument for him. "But they had not been
born with that aspect, that attribute, of the gift." He leaned toward her.
"Zedd, besides training them, must have used magic to help them become
wizards, right?"
Kahlan frowned at the thought. "I don't know. They never told me about
their training to become wizards. That was never germane to their
relationship with me or my training."
"But Zedd has Additive Magic," Richard pressed. "Additive can change
things, add to them, make them more than they are."
"All right," Kahlan cautiously agreed. "What's the point?"
"The point is that Zedd took people who weren't born with the gift to
be wizards and he trained them but--more importantly--he must have also used
his power to help them along that path by altering how they were born. He
had to have added to their gift to make them more than they were born to
be." Richard glanced over at her as his horse stepped around a small,
scraggly pine. "He altered people with magic."
Kahlan let out a deep breath as she looked away from Richard and ahead
at the gentle spread of grassy hills to either side of them, as she tried to
fully grasp the concept of what he was saying.
"I never considered that before, but all right," she finally said. "So,
what of it?"
"We thought that only the wizards of old could do such a thing, but,
apparently, it's not a lost art nor would it be entirely so far-fetched as I
had imagined for the wizards back then to believe they could change what
was, into what they thought it ought to be. What I'm saying is that, like
what Zedd did to give people that with which they were not born, so too did
the wizards of old try to give people born as pillars of Creation a spark of
the gift."
Kahlan felt a chill of realization. The implication was staggering. Not
just the wizards of old, but Zedd, too, had used magic to alter the very
nature of people, the very nature of what they were, how they were born.
She supposed that he had only helped them to achieve what was their
greatest ambition in life--their calling--by enhancing what they already had
been born with. He helped them to reach their full potential. But that was
for men who had the innate potential. While the wizards of long ago probably
had done similar things to help people, they had also sometimes used their
power for less benevolent reasons.
"So," he said, "the wizards back then, who were experienced in altering
people's abilities, thought that these people called the pillars of Creation
could be cured."
"Cured of not having been born gifted," she said in a flat tone of
incredulity.
"Not exactly. They weren't trying to make them into wizards, but they
thought they could at least be cured of not having that infinitesimal spark
of the gift that simply enabled them to interact with magic."
Kahlan took a purging breath. "So then what happened?"
"This book was written after the great war had ended--after the barrier
had been created and the Old World had been sealed away. It was written
after the New World was at peace, or, at least, after the barrier kept the
Old World contained.
"But remember what we found out before? That we think that during the
war Wizard Ricker and his team had done something to halt Sub-tractive
Magic's ability to be passed on to the offspring of wizards? Well, after the
war, those born with the gift started becoming increasingly uncommon, and
those who were being born were being born without the Subtractive side."
"So, after the war," she said, "those who were born with the gift of
both Additive and Subtractive were rapidly becoming nonexistent. We already
knew that."
"Right." Richard leaned toward her and lifted the book. "But then, when
there are fewer wizards being born, all of a sudden the wizards additionally
realize that they have all these pristinely ungifted--breaks altogether in
the link to magic--on their hands. Suddenly, on top of the problem of the
birth rate of those with the gift to be wizards dropping, they were faced
with what they called pillars of Creation."
Kahlan swayed in the saddle as she thought about it, trying to imagine
the situation at the Keep at the time. "I can see that they would have been
pretty concerned."
His voice lowered meaningfully. "They were desperate."
Kahlan laid her reins over, moving in behind Richard as his horse
stepped around an ancient, fallen tree that had been bleached silver from
the sweltering sun.
"So, I suppose," Kahlan asked as she walked her horse back up beside
him, "that the wizards started to do the same thing Zedd did? Trained those
who had the calling--those who wished to be wizards but had not been born
with the gift?"
"Yes, but back then," Richard said, "they trained those with only
Additive to be able to use the Subtractive, too, like full wizards of the
time. As time went on, though, even that was being lost to them, and they
were only able to do what Zedd did--train men to be wizards but they could
only wield Additive Magic.
"But that isn't really what the book is about," Richard said as he
gestured dismissively. "That was just a side point to record what they had
attempted. They started out with confidence. They thought that these pillars
of Creation could be cured of being pristinely ungifted, much like wizards
with only Additive could be trained to use both sides of the magic, and
those without the gift for wizardry could be made wizards able to use at
least the Additive side of it."
The way he used his hands when he talked reminded her of the way Zedd
did when he became worked up. "They tried to modify the very nature of how
these people had been born. They tried to take people without any spark of
the gift, and alter them in a desperate attempt to give them the ability to
interact with magic. They weren't just adding or enhancing, they were trying
to create something out of nothing."
Kahlan didn't like the sound of that. They knew that in those ancient
times the wizards had great power, and they altered people with the gift,
manipulated their gift, to suit a specific purpose.
They created weapons out of people.
In the great war, Jagang's ancestors were one such weapon: dream
walkers. Dream walkers were created to be able to take over the minds of
people in the New World and control them. Out of desperation, the bond of
the Lord Rahl was created to counter that weapon, to protect a people from
the dream walkers.
Any number of human weapons were conjured from the gifted. Such changes
were often profound, and they were irrevocable. At times, the creations were
monsters of boundless cruelty. From this heritage, Ja-gang had been born.
During that great war, one of the wizards who had been put on trial for
treason refused to reveal what damage he had done. When even torture failed
to gain the man's confession, the wizards conducting the trial turned to the
talents of a wizard named Merritt and ordered the creation of a Confessor.
Magda Searus, the first Confessor, extracted the man's confession. The
tribunal was so pleased with the results of Wizard Merritt's conjuring that
they commanded that an order of Confessors be created.
Kahlan felt no different than other people felt, she was no less human,
no less a woman, loved life no less, but her Confessor's power was the
result of that conjuring. She, too, was a descendant of women altered to be
weapons--in this case weapons designed to find the truth.
"What's the matter?" Richard asked.
She glanced over and saw the look of concern on his face. Kahlan forced
a smile and shook her head that it was nothing.
"So what is it that you discovered by jumping ahead in the book?"
Richard took a deep breath as he folded his hands over the pommel of
the saddle. "Essentially, they were attempting to use color in order to help
people born without eyes ... to see."
From Kahlan's understanding of magic and of history, this was
fundamentally different from even the most malevolent experiments to alter
people into weapons. Even in the most vile of these instances, they were
attempting to take away some attribute of their humanity and at the same
time add to or enhance an elemental ability. In none of it were they trying
to create that which was not there at all.
"In other words," Kahlan summed up, "they failed."
Richard nodded. "So, here they were, the great war was long over and
the Old World--those who had wanted to end magic, much like the Imperial
Order--was safely sealed away beyond the barrier that had been created. Now
they find out that the birth rate of those carrying the gift of wizardry is
plummeting, and that the magic engendered by the House of Rahl, the bond
with his people designed to stop the dream walkers from taking them, has an
unexpected consequence--it also gives birth to the pristinely ungifted, who
are an irreversible break in the lineage of magic."
"They have two problems, then," Kahlan said. "They have fewer wizards
being born to deal with problems of magic, and they have people being born
with no link at all to the magic."
"That's right. And the second problem was growing faster than the
first. In the beginning, they thought they would find a solution, a cure.
They didn't. Worse, as I explained before, those born of the pristinely
ungifted, like Jennsen, always bear children the same as they. In a few
generations, the number of the people without the link to the gift was
growing faster than anyone ever expected."
Kahlan let out a deep breath. "Desperate indeed."
"It was becoming chaos."
She hooked a loose strand of hair back. "What did they decide?"
Richard regarded her with one of those looks that told her he was
pretty disturbed by what he'd found.
"They chose magic over people. They deemed that this attribute-- magic,
or those who possessed it--was more important than human life." His voice
rose. "Here they took the very thing they fought the war over, the right of
those who were born the way they were--in that case people born with
magic--to their own lives, to exist, and they turned it all around to be
that this attribute was more important than the life which held it!"
He let out a breath and lowered his voice. "There were too many to
execute, so they did the next best thing--they banished them."
Kahlan's eyebrows went up. "Banished them? To where?"
Richard leaned toward her with fire in his eyes. "The Old World."
"What!"
Richard shrugged, as if speaking on behalf of the wizards back then,
mocking their reasoning. "What else could they do? They could hardly execute
them; they were friends and family. Many of those normal people with the
spark of the gift--but who were not gifted as wizards or sorceresses and so
didn't think of themselves as gifted--had sons, daughters, brothers,
sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors who had married these pristinely
ungifted, these pillars of Creation. They were part of society--a society
which was less and less populated by the truly gifted.
"In a society where they were increasingly outnumbered and mistrusted,
the ruling gifted couldn't bring themselves to put all these tainted people
to death."
"You mean they even considered it?"
Richard's eyes told her that they had and what he thought of the
notion. "But in the end, they couldn't. At the same time, after trying
everything, they now realized that they couldn't ever restore the link to
magic once it was broken by these people, and such people were marrying and
having children, and the children were marrying and having children--who in
every case passed along this taint. And, those so tainted were increasing in
numbers faster than anyone had imagined.
"As far as the gifted were concerned, their very world was threatened,
in much the same way it had been threatened by the war. That was, after all,
what those in the Old World had been trying to do-- destroy magic--and here
it was, the very thing they feared, happening.
"They couldn't repair the damage, they couldn't stop it from spreading,
and they couldn't put to death all those among them. At the same time, with
the taint multiplying, they knew that they were running out of time. So,
they settled on what to them was the only way out-- banishment."
"And they could cross the barrier?" she asked.
"Those with the gift, for all practical purposes, were prevented from
crossing the barrier, but for those who were pillars of Creation, magic did
not exist; they were unaffected by it, so, to them, the barrier was not an
obstacle."
"How could those in charge be sure they had all the pillars of
Creation? If any escaped, the banishment would fail to solve their problem."
"Those with the gift--wizards and sorceresses--can somehow recognize
those pristinely ungifted for what they are: holes in the world, as Jennsen
said those like her were called. The gifted can see them, but not sense them
with their gift. Apparently, it wasn't a problem to know who the pillars of
Creation were."
"Can you tell any difference?" Kahlan asked. "Can you sense Jennsen as
being different? Being a hole in the world?"
"No. But I've not been taught to use my ability. How about you?"
Kahlan shook her head. "I'm not a sorceress, so I guess that I don't
have the ability to detect those like her." She shifted her weight in her
saddle. "So, what happened with those people back then?"
"The people of the New World collected all those ungifted offspring of
the House of Rahl and their every single last descendant, and sent the whole
lot of them across the great barrier, to the Old World, where the people had
professed that they wanted mankind to be free of magic."
Richard smiled with the irony, even of such a grim event as this. "The
wizards of the New World, in essence, gave their enemy in the Old World
exactly what they professed to want, what they had been fighting for:
mankind without magic."
His smile withered. "Can you imagine deciding that we had to banish
Jennsen and send her into some fearful unknown, simply because of the fact
that she can't see magic?"
Kahlan shook her head as she tried to envision such a time. "What a
horror, to be uprooted and sent away, especially to the enemy of your own
people."
Richard rode in silence for a time. Finally, he went on with the story.
"It was a terrifying event for those banished, but it was also traumatic
almost beyond endurance to those who were left. Can you even imagine what it
must have been like. All those friends and relatives suddenly ripped out of
your life, your family? The disruption to trade and livelihood?" Richard's
words came with bitter finality. "All because they decided some attribute
was more important than human life."
Just listening to the story, Kahlan felt as if she had been through an
ordeal. She watched Richard riding beside her, staring off, lost in his own
thoughts.
"Then what?" she finally asked. "Did they ever hear from those who were
banished?"
He shook his head. "No, nothing. They were now beyond the great
barrier. They were gone."
Kahlan stroked her horse's neck, just to feel the comfort of something
alive. "What did they do about those who were born after that?"
Still he stared off. "Killed them."
Kahlan swallowed in revulsion. "I can't imagine how they could do
that."
"They could tell, once the child was born, if it was ungifted. It was
said to be easier then, before it was named."
Kahlan couldn't find her voice for a moment. "Still," she said in a
weak voice, "I can't imagine it."
"It's no different from what Confessors did about the birth of male
Confessors."
His words cut through her. She hated the memory of those times. Hated
the memory of a male child being born to a Confessor. Hated the memory of
them being put to death by command of the mother.
There was said to be no choice. Male Confessors in the past had had no
self-control over their power. They became monsters, started wars, caused
unimaginable suffering.
It was argued that there was no choice but to put a male child of a
Confessor to death, before they were named.
Kahlan couldn't force herself to look up into Richard's eyes. The witch
woman, Shota, had foretold that she and Richard would conceive a male child.
Neither Kahlan nor Richard would ever for an instant consider harming any
child of theirs, a child resulting from their love for one another, from
their love of life. She couldn't imagine putting a child of theirs to death
for being born a male child of her as a Confessor, or an ungifted male or
female child of Richard for being a Rahl. How could anyone say that such a
life had no right to exist because of who they were, what they were like, or
what they might possibly become.
"Somewhere along the line after this book was written," Richard said in
a quiet voice, "things changed. When this book was written, the Lord Rahl of
D'Hara always married, and they knew when he produced an offspring. When the
child was pristinely ungifted, they ended its life as mercifully as they
could.
"At some point, ruling wizards of the House of Rahl became like Darken
Rahl. They took any woman they wanted, whenever they wanted. The details,
such as if an ungifted child born of those couplings was actually a pillar
of Creation, became unimportant to them. They simply killed any offspring,
except the gifted heir."
"But they were wizards--they could have told which ones were like that
and at least not killed the rest."
"If they wanted, I suppose they could have, but, like Darken Rahl,
their only interest was in the single gifted heir. They simply killed the
rest."
"So, such offspring hid for fear of their life and one managed to
escape the grasp of Darken Rahl until you killed him first. And so you have
a sister, Jennsen."
Richard's smile returned. "And so I do."
Kahlan followed his gaze and saw distant specks, black-tipped races,
watching, as they soared on the updrafts of the high cliffs of the mountains
to the east.
She took a purging breath of the hot, humid air. "Richard, those
ungifted offspring that were banished to the Old World, do you think they
survived?"
"If the wizards in the Old World didn't slaughter them."
"But everyone down here in the Old World is the same as in the New
World. I've fought against the soldiers from here--with Zedd and the Sisters
of the Light. We used magic of every sort to try to halt the Order's
advance. I can tell you firsthand that all those from the Old World are
affected by magic, so that means they all are born with that spark of the
gift. There are no broken links in the chain of magic in the Old World."
"From everything I've seen down here, I'd have to agree."
Kahlan wiped sweat from her brow. It was running into her eyes. "So
what happened to those banished people?"
Richard gazed off toward the mountains beneath the races. "I can't
imagine. But it must have been horrifying for them."
"So you think that maybe that was the end of them? That maybe they
perished, or were put to death?"
He regarded her with a sidelong glance. "I don't know. But what I'd
like to know is why that place back there is named the same as they were
called in this book: the Pillars of Creation." His eyes took on a menacing
gleam. "And far worse yet, I'd like to know why, as Jennsen told us, a copy
of this book is among Jagang's most prized possessions."
That troublesome thought had been running through Kahlan's mind as
well.
She looked up at him from beneath a frown. "Maybe you shouldn't have
skipped ahead in your reading of the book, Lord Rahl."
Richard's fleeting smile wasn't all she'd hoped for. "I'll be relieved
if that's the biggest mistake I've made, lately."
"What do you mean?"
He raked his hair back. "Is anything different about your Confessor's
power?"
"Different?" Almost involuntarily, his question caused her to draw
back, to focus inwardly, to take stock of the force she always felt within
herself. "No. It feels the same as always."
The power coiled in the core of her being did not need to be summoned
when there was need of it. As always, it was there at the ready; it only
required that she release her restraint of it for it to be unleashed.
"There's something wrong with the sword," he said, catching her by
surprise. "Wrong with its power."
Kahlan couldn't imagine what to make of such a notion. "How can you
tell? What's different?"
Richard idly stroked his thumbs along the reins turned back over his
fingers. "It's hard to define exactly what's different. I'm just used to the
feeling of it being at my beck and call. It responds when I need it, but for
some reason it seems to be hesitant about doing so."
Kahlan felt that now, more than ever, they needed to get back to
Aydindril and see Zedd. Zedd was the keeper of the sword. Even though they
couldn't take the sword through the sliph, Zedd would be able to give them
insight about any nuance of its power. He would know what to do. He would be
able to help Richard with the headaches, too.
And Kahlan knew that Richard needed help. She could see that he wasn't
himself. His gray eyes held a glaze of pain, but there was something more
etched in his expression, in the way he moved, the way he carried himself.
The whole explanation of the book and what he had discovered seemed to
have sapped his strength.
She was beginning to think that it wasn't she, after all, who was the
one running out of time, but that it was Richard. That thought, despite the
warm afternoon sun, sent cold terror racing through her.
Richard checked the others over his shoulder. "Let's go back to the
wagon. I need to get something warmer to put on. It's freezing today."
114
Zedd peered up the deserted street. He could have sworn that he saw
someone. Using his gift to search for any sign of life told him that there
was no one anywhere around. Still, he remained motionless as he stared.
The warm breeze pressed his simple robes against his bony frame and
gently ruffled his disheveled white hair. A tattered, sun-faded blue dress
that someone had pinned to a second-floor balcony railing to dry flapped
like a flag in the wind. The dress, along with a city full of personal
possessions, had long ago been left behind.
The buildings, their walls painted various colors from a rusty red to
yellow with shutters in bright, contrasting hues, stuck out to slightly
varying degrees on either side of the narrow cobbled street, making a canyon
of colorful walls. Most of the second stories overhung the bottom floors by
a few feet, and, with their eaves hanging out even more, the buildings
closed off the better part of the sky except for a snaking slit of afternoon
sunlight that followed the sinuous course of the street up and over the
gentle hill. The doors were all tightly shut, most of the windows shuttered.
A pale green gate to an alleyway hung open, squeaking as it swung to and fro
in the breeze.
Zedd decided that it must have been a trick of the light that he'd
seen, maybe a windowpane that had moved in the wind sending a flicker of
light across a wall.
When he was at last sure that he had been mistaken about seeing anyone,
Zedd started back down the street, yet remained close to one side, walking
as quietly as possible. The Imperial Order army had not returned to the city
since Zedd had unleashed the light web that had killed an enormous number of
their force, but that didn't mean that there couldn't be dangers about.
No doubt Emperor Jagang still wanted the city, and especially the Keep,
but he was no fool and he knew that a few more light webs ignited among his
army, no matter how vast it was, would in that instant reduce his force by
such staggering numbers that it could alter the course of the war. Jagang
had fought against the Midland and D'Haran forces for a year and in all
those battles he had not lost as many men as he'd lost in that one blinding
moment. He would not casually risk another such event.
After such a blow Jagang would want to capture the Keep more than he
had ever wanted it before. He would want Zedd more than ever before.
Had Zedd more of the light webs like the one his frantic search through
the Keep had turned up, he would have already unleashed them all on the
Order. He sighed. If only he had more.
Still, Jagang didn't know that he had no more such constructed spells.
As long as Jagang feared that there were more, it served Zedd's purpose in
keeping the Imperial Order out of Aydindril and away from the Wizard's Keep.
Some harm had been done to the Confessors' Palace when Jagang had been
gulled into attacking, but Zedd judged that trying that trick had been worth
the regrettable damage; it had almost netted him and Adie the emperor's
hide. Damage could always be repaired. He vowed that it would be repaired.
Zedd clenched a fist at how close he had come to finishing Jagang that
day. At least he had dealt a mighty blow to his army.
And Zedd might have had Jagang had it not been for that strange young
woman. He shook his head at the memory of actually seeing one who could not
be touched by magic. He'd known, in theory, of their existence, but had
never before known it for certain to be true. Vague references in old books
made for interesting abstract speculation, but seeing it with his own eyes
was quite something else.
It had been an unsettling sight. Adie had been shaken by the encounter
even more than he; she was blind, yet with the aid of the gift could see
better than he could. That day, she had not been able to see the young woman
who was there, but, in some ways, not there. To Zedd's eyes, if not his
gift, she was a beautiful sight, with some of Darken Rahl's looks, but
different and altogether captivating. That she was half sister to Richard
was clear; she shared some of his features, especially the eyes. If only
Zedd could have stopped her, kept her out of the way, convinced her that she
was making a terrible mistake by being with the Order, or even if he could
have killed her, Jagang would not have escaped justice.
Still, Zedd held no illusions about ending the threat of the Imperial
Order simply by killing Jagang. Jagang was merely the brute who led other
brutes in enforcing blind faith in the Order, a blind faith that embraced
death as salvation from what it preached was the corrupt misery of life, a
blind faith in which life itself had no value but as a bloody sacrifice upon
the altar of altruism, a blind faith that blamed the failure of its own
ideas on mankind for being wicked and for failing to offer sufficient
sacrifice in an endless quest for some illusive greater good that grew ever
more distant, a blind faith in an Order that clung to power by feeding off
the carcasses of the productive lives it ruined.
A faith that by its very beliefs rejected reason and embraced the
irrational could not long endure without intimidation and force-- without
brutes like Jagang to enforce such faith.
While Emperor Jagang was brutally effective, it was a mistake to think
that if Jagang were to die that very day it would end the threat of the
Order. It was the Order's ideas that were so dangerous; the priests of the
Order would find other brutes.
The only real way to end the Order's reign of terror was to expose the
naked evil of its teachings to the light of truth, and for those suffering
under its doctrines to throw off the Order's yoke. Until then, they would
have to fight the Imperial Order back as best they could, hoping at least to
eventually contain them.
Zedd poked his head around a corner, watching, listening, sniffing the
wind for any trace of anyone who might be lurking about. The city was
deserted, but on a number of occasions stray Imperial Order soldiers had
wandered in out of the mountains.
After the destruction caused by the light web, panic had swept through
the Order's encampment. Many soldiers had scattered to the hills. Once the
army had regrouped, a large number of men had decided to desert instead of
returning to their units. Tens of thousands of such deserters were rounded
up and executed, their bodies left to rot as a warning of what happened to
those who abandoned the cause of the greater glory of the Imperial Order, or
as the Order liked to put it, the cause of the greater good. Most of the
rest of the men who had run to the hills had then had a change of heart and
straggled back into camp.
There were still some, though, who had not wanted to go back and had
not been caught. For a time, after Jagang's army had moved on, they had
wandered into the city, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups, half
starved, to search for food and to loot. Zedd had lost count of how many
such men he had killed.
He was reasonably sure that all of those stragglers were dead, now. The
Order was made up of men mostly from cities and towns. Such men weren't used
to living in the wild. Their job was to overwhelm the enemy, to kill, rape,
terrorize, and plunder. A whole corps of logistics personnel provided them
with support, delivering and dispensing a constant stream of supplies that
rolled in to feed and care for the soldiers. They were violent men, but they
were men who needed to be tended, who depended on the group for their
survival. They didn't last long on their own in the trackless forested
mountains surrounding Ay-dindril.
But Zedd hadn't seen any of them for quite some time. He was reasonably
sure that the stragglers had starved, been killed, or had long ago headed
back south, to the Old World.
There was always the possibility, though, that Jagang had sent
assassins to Aydindril; some of those assassins could be Sisters of the
Light, or worse, Sisters of the Dark. For that reason, Zedd rarely left the
safety of the Keep, and when he did, he was cautious. Too, he hated poking
around the city, seeing it so devoid of life. This had been his home for
much of his life. He remembered the days when the Keep was a hub of
activity--not as it once had been, he knew, but alive with people of all
sorts. He found himself smiling at the memory.
His smile faded. Now the city was a joyless sight, forlorn without
people filling the streets, people talking from one balcony to a neighbor
across the street in another window, people gathering to trade goods in the
market. Not so long ago men would have stopped to have conversations in
doorways while vendors pulled carts of their wares along the narrow streets
and children at play skipped through the throngs. Zedd sighed at the sad
sight of such lifeless streets.
At least those lives were safe, if a long way from home. Although he
had many fundamental differences with the Sisters of the Light, he knew that
their Prelate, Verna, and the rest of the free Sisters would watch over
them.
The only problem was that now that Jagang had nothing in Aydindril of
any real value to conquer except the Keep, and much to lose, he had wheeled
his army east toward the remnants of the Midland forces. To be sure, the
D'Haran army waited across those mountains to the east and Zedd knew how
formidable they were, but he couldn't fool himself that they stood a chance
against a force as immense as the Imperial Order.
Jagang had left the city in order to go after those D'Haran forces. The
Imperial Order could not win the war by occupying an empty city; they needed
to crush any resistance once and for all so that there would be no people
left who could, by living prosperous, happy, peaceful lives, put the lie to
the Order's teachings.
Now that Jagang had come all the way up through the Midlands, he had
cleaved the New World. Forces had been left all along the route to occupy
cities and towns. Now the main force of the Order would turn its blood lust
east, on a lone D'Hara. By dividing the New World in such a way, Jagang
would be able to more efficiently crush opposition.
Zedd knew that it wasn't for lack of trying that the New World had
given ground. He and Kahlan, among a great many others, had worked
themselves sick, month after month, trying to find a way to stop Ja-gang's
forces.
Zedd clutched his robes at his throat, at the painful memory of such
ferocious fighting, at how nothing had worked against Jagang's numbers, at
the death and dying, at the friends he had lost. It was only a matter of
time until all was lost to the hordes from the Old World.
Richard and Kahlan would not survive such a conquest by the Imperial
Order. Zedd's thin fingers covered his trembling lips at the ghastly thought
of them being lost, too. They were the only family he had left. They were
everything to him.
Zedd felt a crushing wave of hopelessness, and had to sit on the stump
of a log section set outside a shoe shop that had been boarded closed. Once
the Imperial Order finally annihilated all opposition, Ja-gang would return
to take the city and lay siege to the Keep. Sooner or later, he would have
it all.
The future, as Zedd imagined it, seemed to be a world shrouded in the
gray pall of life under the Imperial Order. If the world fell under that
pall, it would probably be a very long time before mankind ever emerged to
live free again. Once liberty was surrendered to tyranny, it could be
smothered for centuries before its flames again sprang to life and
brightened the world.
Zedd hadn't sat for long when he forced himself to his feet. He was
First Wizard. He had been in hopeless straits before and had seen the foe
turned back. There was still the possibility that he and Adie could find
something in the Keep that would aid them, or that they might yet discover
information in the libraries that would give them a valuable advantage.
As long as there was life, they could fight on toward their goal. They
still had the ability to triumph.
He harrumphed to himself. He would triumph.
Zedd was glad that Adie wasn't with him to see him in such a sorry
state that he would have--if even momentarily--considered defeat. Adie would
have never let him hear the end of it, and deservedly so.
He harrumphed again. He was hardly inexperienced, hardly without the
wherewithal to handle challenges that arose. And if there were assassins
about, gifted or not, they would find themselves caught up by one of the
many little surprises he had left around. Very nasty surprises.
Chin up, Zedd smiled to himself as he turned down a narrow alley,
making his way past a patchwork of yards with empty pens that had once held
chickens, geese, ducks, and pigeons. His gaze passed over small back
courtyards, their herbs and flowers growing untended, their wash lines
empty, their wood and other materials stacked to the sides, waiting for
people to return and work them into something useful.
Along the way he stopped in various vegetable gardens, harvesting the
volunteer crops that had sprung up. There was lettuce aplenty, spinach, some
small squash, green tomatoes, and still a few peas. He collected his bounty
in a canvas sack and slung it over a shoulder as he walked the garden plots,
checking on the progress of irregular patches of onions, beets, beans, and
turnips. Still some growing to do, he concluded.
While the vegetables weren't thick from a careful planting, the random
growth in yards all over the city meant that he and Adie would have fresh
vegetables for some time to come. Maybe she might even take to putting some
things up for next winter. They could store root crops in the colder places
in the Keep, and preserve more perishable vegetables. They would have more
food than they could eat.
On his way up the alley, Zedd spied a bush off toward the corner,
sprawled green and lush over a short back fence between two homes. The
blackberry bush was loaded with ripe berries. He paused occasionally to
check up and down the streets beyond while he made a nice-sized pile of the
dark, plump berries in a square of cloth, then tied it up and placed it atop
the heavier goods in his sack.
There were still plenty of ripe berries, and he hated to let them go to
waste, or to the birds, so he worked at filling his pockets. He didn't worry
that it would spoil his dinner; it was a long walk back up the mountain to
the Wizard's Keep, so he could use a snack. Adie was making a thick stew
from cured ham. There was no danger that he would spoil his appetite on mere
berries. She would be pleased by the vegetables he brought and would no
doubt want to add them to the stew straightaway. Adie was a wonderful cook,
although he dared not admit it to her lest she get a big head. Before the
stone bridge, Zedd paused, gazing back down the wide road leading up the
mountainside. Only the wind in the trees and their shimmering leaves created
any sound or movement. For a long moment, though, he stared down at the
empty road.
Finally, he turned back to the bridge that in less than three hundred
paces spanned a chasm with near vertical sides dropping away for thousands
of feet. Clouds far below hung hard against the sheer rock walls. Despite
the countless times he had walked over the stone bridge, it still made him
feel just a little queasy. Without wings, though, there was but this single
way into the Keep--except for the little trick passage he had used as a boy.
Because of their strategic role, Zedd had placed enough snares and
traps along the bridge and the rest of the road up to the Keep that no one
was going to live for more than a few paces once they came close. Not even a
Sister of the Dark could trespass here. A few Sisters had attempted the
impossible, and had paid with their lives.
They would have suspected such webs laid by the First Wizard himself,
and felt some of the warning shields, but no doubt Jagang had given them no
choice in the matter and had sent them to attempt entry, sacrificing their
lives for the greater good of the Order.
Verna had once briefly been taken captive by the dream walker and she
had told Zedd all about the experience in the hope that they might find a
counter, other than swearing loyalty in one's heart to the Lord Rahl and
thereby invoking the protection of the bond. Zedd had tried, but there was
no countermagic he could provide. In the great war, wizards far more
talented than he, and with both sides of the gift, had tried to devise
defenses against dream walkers. Once the dream walker had taken over a
person's mind, there was no defense; you had to do his bidding, regardless
of the cost, even if the cost was your life.
Zedd suspected that for a few, death was a coveted release from the
agony of possession by the dream walker. Suicide was a course blocked by
Jagang; he needed the talents of the Sisters and other gifted. He couldn't
have them all kill themselves for release from the misery of life as his
chattel. But if he sent them to their certain death, such as attempting to
enter the Keep, then they could at last be free of the agony that had become
their life.
Ahead, the Keep towered on the mountainside. The soaring walls of dark
stone, intimidating to most people, offered Zedd the warm sense of home. His
eyes roamed the ramparts, and he remembered strolling there with his wife so
many years ago--a lifetime ago, it seemed. From the towers he had often
looked down at the beautiful sight of Aydindril below. He had once marched
across the bridges and passageways to deliver orders defending the Midlands
from an invasion from D'Hara, led by Darken Rahl's father.
That, too, seemed a lifetime ago. Now Richard, his grandson, was the
Lord Rahl, and had succeeded in uniting most of the Midlands under the rule
of the D'Haran Empire. Zedd shook his head at the wonder of it, at the
thought of how Richard had changed everything. By Richard's hand, Zedd was
now a subject of the D'Haran Empire. What a wonder indeed.
Before he reached the far side of the bridge, Zedd glanced down into
the chasm. Movement caught his attention. Putting his bony fingers on the
rough stone, he leaned out a little for a look. Below, but above the clouds,
he saw two huge birds, black as moonless midnight, gliding along through the
split in the mountain. Zedd had never seen the like of them. He couldn't
imagine what to make of the sight.
When he turned back to the Keep, he thought he saw three more of the
same kind of large black birds flying together, high above the Keep. He
decided that they had to be ravens. Ravens were big. He must simply be
misjudging the distance--probably from lack of food. Concluding that they
had to be ravens, he tried to adjust his estimation of their distance, but
they were already gone. He glanced down, but didn't see the other two,
either.
As he passed under the iron portcullis, feeling the warm embrace of the
Keep's spell, Zedd felt a wave of loneliness. He so missed Erilyn, his
long-dead wife, as well as his long-passed daughter, Richard's mother, and,
dear spirits, he missed Richard. He smiled then, thinking of Richard being
with his own wife, now. It was still sometimes hard for him to think of
Richard as grown into a man. He had had a wondrous time helping to raise
Richard. What a time that had been in his life, off in Westland, away from
the Midlands, away from magic and responsibility, with just that ever
curious boy and a whole world of wonders to explore and show him.
What a time indeed. Inside the Keep, lamps along the wall obediently
sprang to flame as First Wizard Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander made his way along
passageways and through grand rooms, deeper into the immense mountain
fortress. As he passed the webs he'd placed, he checked the texture of their
magic to find that they were undisturbed. He sighed in relief. He didn't
expect that anyone would be foolish enough to try to enter the Keep, but the
world had fools to spare. He didn't really like leaving such dangerous webs
cast all about the place, in addition to the often dangerous shields already
guarding the Keep, but he dared not relax his guard.
As he passed a long side table in a towering gathering hall, Zedd, as
he had done since he was a boy, ran his finger along the smooth groove in
the edge of the variegated chocolate-brown marble top. He stopped, frowning
down at the table, and realized that it contained something he suddenly felt
the want of: a ball of fine black cord left there years ago to tie ribbons
and other decorations on the lamp brackets in the gathering hall to mark the
harvest festival.
Sure enough, in the center drawer, he found the ball of fine cord. He
snatched it up and slipped it into a pocket long emptied of its load of
berries. From the wall bracket beside the table, he lifted a wand with six
small bells. The wand, one of hundreds if not thousands throughout the Keep,
was once used to summon servants. He sighed inwardly. It had been decades
since servants and their families last lived in the Wizard's Keep. He
remembered their children running and playing in the halls. He remembered
the joy of laughter echoing throughout the Keep, bringing life to the place.
Zedd told himself that one day children would again run and laugh in
the halls. Richard and Kahlan's children. Zedd's broad smile stretched his
cheeks.
There were windows and openings in the stone that let light spill into
many halls and rooms, but there were other places less well lit. Zedd found
one of those darker places that was dim enough to satisfy him. He stretched
a piece of the black cord, strung with one of the bells, across the doorway,
winding it around coarse stone molding to each side. Moving deeper through
the labyrinth of halls and passage-ways, he stopped and strung more strings
with a bell at places where it would be hard to see. He had to collect
several more of the servant wands for a supply of bells.
Although there were shields of magic laced everywhere, there was no
telling what powers some of the Sisters of the Dark possessed. They would be
looking for magic, not bells. It couldn't hurt to take the extra precaution.
Zedd made mental notes of where he strung the fine black cord-- he