Naked Empire (40 page)

“You men here are their last chance…their only chance.

“You must now hear the rest of what I have to tell you and then make up your minds as to what will be your future.”

The haggard, ragtag men, all dressed in worn and dirty clothes, all looking like they’d had a very difficult time of living in the hills, either spoke up or nodded that they would hear him out. Some even looked as if they might be relieved by how directly and honestly he spoke to them. A few even looked hungry for what he might say.

“Three years ago from the coming autumn,” Richard began, “I lived in a place called Hartland. I was a woods guide. I had a peaceful life in a place I loved among those I loved. I knew very little about the places beyond my home. In some ways I was like you people before the Order came, so I can understand some of what you felt about how things changed.

“Like you, I lived beyond a boundary that protected us from those who would do us harm.”

The men broke out in excited whispering, apparently surprised and pleased that they could relate to him in this way, that they had something so basic in common with him.

“What happened, then?” one of the men asked.

Richard couldn’t help himself; he couldn’t hold back the smile that overwhelmed him.

“One day, in my woods”—he held his hand out to the side—“Kahlan showed up. Like you, her people were in desperate trouble. She needed help. Rather than poison me, though, she told me her story and how trouble was coming our way. Much like you, the boundary protecting her people had failed and a tyrant had invaded her homeland. She also came bearing a warning that this man would soon come to my homeland, too, and conquer my people, my friends, my loved ones.”

All the faces turned toward Kahlan. The men stared openly, as if seeing her for the first time. It looked to be astonishing to them that this statuesque woman before them could be a savage, as they thought of outsiders, and have the same kind of trouble they’d had. Richard was leaving out vast chunks of the story, but he wanted to keep it simple enough to be clear to these men.

“I was named the Seeker of Truth and given this sword to help me in this important struggle.” Richard lifted the hilt clear of the scabbard by half the length of the blade, letting the men all see the polished steel. Many grimaced at seeing such a weapon.

“Together, side by side, Kahlan and I struggled to stop the man who sought to enslave or destroy us all. In a strange land, she was my guide, not only helping me to fight against those who would kill us, but helping me to come to understand the wider world I had never before considered. She opened my eyes to what was out there, beyond the boundary that had protected me and my people. She helped me to see the approaching shadow of tyranny and know the true stakes involved—life itself.

“She made me live up to the challenge. Had she not, I would not be alive today, and a great many more people would be dead or enslaved.”

Richard had to turn away, then, at the flood of painful memories, at the thought of all those lost in the struggle. At the victories so hard won.

He put his hand to the statue for support as he remembered the gruesome murder of George Cypher, the man who had raised him, the man who, until that struggle, Richard had always believed was his father. The pain of it, so distant and far away, came rushing back again. He remembered the horror of that time, of suddenly realizing that he would never again see the man he dearly loved. He had forgotten until that moment how much he missed him.

Richard gathered his composure and turned back to the men. “In the end, and only with Kahlan’s help, I won the struggle against that tyrant I had never known existed until the day she had come into my woods and warned me.

“That man was Darken Rahl, my father, a man I had never known.”

The men stared in disbelief. “You never knew?” one asked in an astonished voice.

Richard shook his head. “It’s a very long story. Maybe another time I will tell you men all of it. For now, I must tell you the important parts that are relevant to you and those you love back there in your homes.”

Richard looked at the ground before him, thinking, as he paced in front of the disorderly knot of men.

“When I killed Darken Rahl, I did it to keep him from killing me and my loved ones. He had tortured and murdered countless people and that alone earned him death, but I had to kill him or he would have killed me. I didn’t know at the time that he was my real father or that in killing him, since I was his heir, I would become the new Lord Rahl.

“Had he known who I was, he might not have been trying to kill me, but he didn’t know. I had information he wanted; he intended to torture it out of me and then kill me. I killed him first.

“Since that time, I have come to learn a great deal. What I learned connects us”—Richard gestured to the men and then placed the hand on his own chest as he met their gazes—“in ways you must come to understand, as well, if you are to succeed in this new struggle.

“The land where I grew up, Kahlan’s land, and the land of D’Hara, all make up the New World. As you have learned, this vast land down here outside where you grew up is called the Old World. After I became Lord Rahl, the barrier protecting us from the Old World failed, much as your own boundary failed. When it did, Emperor Jagang of the Imperial Order, down here in the Old World, used the opportunity to invade the New World, my home, much as he invaded your home. We’ve been fighting him and his troops for over two years, trying to defeat them or at least to drive them back to the Old World.

“The barrier that failed had protected us from the Order, or men like them, for around three thousand years, longer, even, than you were protected. Before that barrier was placed at the end of a great war, the enemy at the time, from the Old World, had used magic to create people called dream walkers.”

The men fell to whispering. They had heard the name, but they didn’t really understand it and speculated on what it could mean.

“Dream walkers,” Richard explained, when they had quieted, “could enter a person’s mind in order to control them. There was no defense. Once a dream walker took over your mind, you became his slave, unable to resist his commands. The people back then were desperate.

“A man named Alric Rahl, my ancestor, came up with a way to protect people’s minds from being taken over by the dream walkers. He was not only the Lord Rahl who ruled D’Hara at the time, but he was also a great wizard. Through his ability he created a bond that when spoken earnestly or given in a more simple form with heartfelt sincerity, protected people from dream walkers entering their minds. Alric Rahl’s link of magic to his people, through this bond, protected them.

“The devotion you men all gave is the formal declaration of that bond. It has been given by the D’Haran people to their Lord Rahl for three thousand years.”

Some of the men in front stepped forward, their faces etched with anxiety. “Are we protected, then, from the dream walkers, Lord Rahl, because we gave this oath? Are we protected from the dream walkers entering our minds and taking us?”

Richard shook his head. “You and your people need no protection. You are already protected in another way.”

Relief swept through the crowd of men. Some gripped the shoulder of another, or placed a hand in relief on a friend’s back. They looked as if they feared that dream walkers were stalking them, and they had just been spared at the last instant.

“But how is it that we can be protected?” Owen asked.

Richard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Well, that’s the part that in a way connects us. You see, as I understand it, magic needs balance in order to function.”

There were knowing nods all around, as if these pristinely ungifted men all had an intimate understanding of magic.

“When Alric Rahl used magic to create this bond in order to protect his people,” Richard went on, “there needed to always be a Lord Rahl to complete the bond, to maintain its power. Not all wizards bear children who also possess this gifted ability, so part of what Alric Rahl did when he created this bond was to make it so that the Lord Rahl would always bear one son who had magic, who had the gift, and could complete this bond with the people of D’Hara. In this way they would always be protected.”

Richard held up a finger to make his point as he swept his gaze over the crowd of men. “What they didn’t know at the time was that this magic inadvertently created its own balance. While the Lord Rahl always produced a gifted heir—a wizard like him—it was only discovered later that he also occasionally produced offspring who were entirely without any magic.”

Richard could see by the blank looks that the men didn’t grasp what he was telling them. He imagined that for people living such isolated lives, his story must seem rather confusing, if not far-fetched. He remembered his own confusion about magic before the boundary had come down and he’d met Kahlan. He hadn’t been raised around magic and he still didn’t understand most of it himself. He’d been born with both sides of the gift, and yet he didn’t know how to control it.

“You see,” he said, “only some people have magic—are gifted, as it’s called. But all people are born with at least a very tiny spark of the gift, even though they can’t manipulate magic. Until just recently, everyone thought of these people as ungifted. You see? The gifted, like wizards and sorceresses, can manipulate magic, and the rest of the people can’t, so they were believed to be ungifted.

“But it turns out that this isn’t accurate, since there is an infinitesimal spark of the gift in everyone born. This tiny spark of the gift is actually what allows people to interact with the magic in the world around them, that is, with things and creatures that have magical properties, and with people who are gifted in a more comprehensive sense—those who do have the ability to manipulate magic.”

“Some people in Bandakar have magic, too,” a man said. “True magic. Only those who have never seen—”

“No,” Richard said, cutting him off. He didn’t want them losing track of his account. “Owen told me about what you people believe is magic. That’s not magic, that’s mysticism. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about real magic that produces real results in the real world. Forget what you’ve been taught about magic, about how faith supposedly creates what you believe in and that is real magic. It’s not real. It’s just the fanciful illusion of magic in people’s imaginations.”

“But it is real,” someone said in a respectful but firm voice. “More real than what you see and feel.”

Richard turned a harsh look on the men. “If it’s so real, then why did you have to use a known poison on me that was mixed by a man who had worked his whole life with herbs? Because you know what’s real, that’s why; when it was vital to your self-interest, to your lives, you resorted to dealing in reality, to what you know really works.”

Richard pointed back at Kahlan. “The Mother Confessor has real magic. It’s no fanciful curse put on someone and when they die ten years later people believe the curse was the cause. She has real magic that is in elemental ways linked to death, so it affects even you. She can touch someone, with this real magic, and in an instant they will be dead. Not ten years from now—right now, on the spot.”

Richard stood resolutely in front of the men, gazing from eye to eye. “If someone doesn’t believe that is real magic, then let’s have a test. Let them perform their faith-based magic and put a spell on me—to kill me right here and now. After they’ve done that, then they will come forward and be touched by the Mother Confessor’s very real, lethal power. Then everyone else will be able to see the results and judge for themselves.” He looked from face to face. “Anyone willing to take up the test? Any magicians among all you ungifted people willing to try it?”

When the men remained silent, no one moving, Richard went on.

“So, it would seem that you men do have some understanding of what’s real and what isn’t. Keep that in mind. Learn from it.

“Now, I told you how the Lord Rahl always bore a son with magic so he could pass on the rule of D’Hara and his gifted ability in order to make the bond work. But, as I said, the bond that Alric Rahl created may have had an unintended consequence.

“Only later was it discovered that the Lord Rahl, possibly as a means of balance, also sometimes produced offspring that were entirely without any magic—not just ungifted in the way most people are, but unlike any people ever born before: they were pristinely ungifted. These pristinely ungifted people had absolutely no spark of the gift whatsoever.

“Because of that, because they were pristinely ungifted, they were unable to interact with the real magic in the world. They were unable to be touched by magic at all. For them, magic might as well not exist because they were not born with the ability to see it or to interact with it. You might say they were like a bird that could not fly. They looked like a bird, they had feathers, they ate bugs, but they couldn’t fly.

“Back then in that time, three thousand years ago, after the bond had been created to protect people from dream walkers in the war, the wizards finally succeeded in placing a barrier between the Old and the New World. Because those in the Old World could no longer come to the New World to wage war, the great war ended. Peace finally came.

“The people of the New World discovered, though, that they had a problem. These pristinely ungifted offspring of the Lord Rahl passed this trait on to their children. Every offspring of a marriage with at least one of these pristinely ungifted partners bears pristinely ungifted children—always, every time. As these offspring married and had children and then grandchildren and then great-grandchildren, as there were more and more of them, that pristinely ungifted trait began spreading throughout the population.

“People, at the time, were frightened because they depended on magic. Magic was part of their world. Magic was what had saved them from the dream walkers. Magic had created the barrier that protected them from the horde from the Old World. Magic had ended the war. Magic healed people, found lost children, produced beautiful creations of art that inspired and brought joy. Magic could help guide people in the course of future events.

“Some towns grew up around a gifted person who could serve people’s needs. Many gifted people earned a living performing such services. In some things, magic gave people control over nature and thus made the lives of everyone better. Things accomplished with the aid of magic improved the living conditions of nearly everyone. Magic was a force of individual creation and thus individual accomplishment. Nearly everyone derived some benefit from it.