Naked Empire

by Terry Goodkind

  When Richard saw Kahlan shivering in the cold drizzle, he withdrew his hot glare from Owen and retrieved her cloak from her pack in the wagon. With the utmost gentleness and care, he wrapped it around her shoulders. By the look on his face, he seemed to have had all he could take of listening to Owen.

  Kahlan seized his hand, holding it to her cheek for a moment. There was some small good in the story they had heard from Owen.

  “This means that the gift isn’t killing you, Richard,” she said in a confidential tone. “It was the poison.”

  She was relieved that they hadn’t run out of time to get him help, as she had so feared on that brief, eternal wagon ride when he’d been unconscious.

  “I had the headaches before I ran into Owen. I still have the headaches. The sword’s magic as well faltered before I was poisoned.”

  “But at least this now gives us more time to find the solutions to those problems.”

  He ran his fingers back through his hair. “I’m afraid we have worse problems, now, and not the time you think.”

  “Worse problems?”

  Richard nodded. “You know the empire Owen comes from? Bandakar? Guess what ‘Bandakar’ means.”

  Kahlan glanced at Owen sitting hunched on the crate and all by himself. She shook her head as her gaze returned to Richard’s gray eyes, troubled more by the suppressed rage in his voice than anything else.

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “In High D’Haran it’s a name. It means ‘the banished.’ Remember from the book, The Pillars of Creation, when I was telling you what it said about how they decided to send all the pristinely ungifted people away to the Old World—to banish them? Remember that I said no one ever knew what became of them?

  “We just found out.

  “The world is now naked before the people of the Bandakaran Empire.”

  Kahlan frowned. “How can you know for certain that he is a descendant of those people?”

  “Look at him. He’s blond and looks more like full-blooded D’Harans than he does the people down here in the Old World. More importantly, though, he’s not affected by magic.”

  “But that could be just him.”

  Richard leaned in closer. “In a closed place like he comes from, a place shut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years, even one pillar of Creation would have spread that ungifted trait throughout the entire population by now.

  “But there wasn’t just one; they were all ungifted. For that, they were banished to the Old World, and in the Old World, where they tried to establish a new life, they were again all collected and banished to that place beyond those mountains—a place they were told was for the bandakar, the banished.”

  “How did the people in the Old World find out about them? How did they keep them all together, without a single one surviving to spread their ungifted trait to the general population, and how did they manage to then put them all in that place—banish them?”

  “Good questions, all, but right now not the important ones.

  “Owen,” Richard called as he turned back to the others, “I want you to stay right there, please, while the rest of us decide what will be our single voice about what we must do.”

  Owen brightened at a method of doing things with which he identified and felt comfortable. He didn’t seem to detect, as did Kahlan, the undercurrent of sarcasm in Richard’s voice.

  “You,” Richard said to the man Kahlan had touched, “go sit beside him and see that he waits there with you.”

  While the man scurried to do as he was told, Richard tilted his head in gesture to the rest of them, calling them away with him. “We need to talk.”

  Friedrich, Tom, Jennsen, Cara, and Kahlan followed Richard away from Owen and the man. Richard leaned back against the chafing rail of the wagon and folded his arms as they all gathered close around him. He took time to appraise each face looking at him.

  “We have big problems,” Richard began, “and not just from the poison Owen gave me. Owen isn’t gifted. He’s like you, Jennsen. Magic doesn’t touch him.” His gaze remained locked on Jennsen’s. “The rest of his people are the same as he, as you.”

  Jennsen’s jaw fell open in astonishment. She looked confused, as if unable to reconcile it all in her mind. Friedrich and Tom looked nearly as startled. Cara’s brow drew down in a dark frown.

  “Richard,” Jennsen finally said, “that just can’t be. There’s too many of them. There’s no way that they can all be half brothers and sisters of ours.”

  “They aren’t half brothers and sisters,” Richard said. “They’re a line of people descended from the House of Rahl—people like you. I don’t have time right now to explain all of it to you, but remember how I told you that you would bear children who were like you, and they would pass that pristinely ungifted trait on to all future generations? Well, back a long time ago, there were people like that spreading in D’Hara. The people back then gathered up all these ungifted people and sent them to the Old World. The people down here then sealed them away beyond those mountains, there. The name of their empire, Bandakar, means ‘the banished.’”

  Jennsen’s big blue eyes filled with tears. She was one of those people, people so hated that they had been banished from the rest of the people in their own land and sent into exile.

  Kahlan put an arm around her shoulders. “Remember how you said that you felt alone in the world?” Kahlan smiled warmly. “You don’t have to feel alone anymore. There are people like you.”

  Kahlan didn’t think her words seemed to help much, but Jennsen welcomed the comfort of the embrace.

  Jennsen abruptly looked back up at Richard. “That can’t be true. They had a boundary that kept them locked in that place. If they were like me they wouldn’t be affected by a boundary of magic. They could have come out of there any time they wished. Over all this time, at least some of them would have come out into the rest of the world—the magic of the boundary couldn’t have held them back.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Richard said. “Remember when you saw the sand flowing sideways in that warning beacon that Sabar brought us? That was magic, and you saw it.”

  “That’s right,” Kahlan said. “If she’s a pillar of Creation, then how is such a thing possible?”

  “That’s right,” Jennsen agreed. “How could that be, if I’m truly ungifted?” Her eyebrows went up. “Richard—maybe it’s not true after all. Maybe I have a bit of the spark of the gift—maybe I’m not really, truly ungifted.”

  Richard smiled. “Jennsen, you’re as pure as a snowflake. You saw that magic for a reason. Nicci wrote us in her letter that the warning beacon was linked to the wizard who created it—linked to him in the underworld. The underworld is the world of the dead. That means that the statue functioned partly through Subtractive Magic—magic having to do with the underworld. You may be immune to magic, but you are not immune to death. Gifted or not, you’re still linked to life, and thus death.

  “That’s why you saw some of the magic of the statue—the part relating to the advancement of death.

  “The boundary was a place in this world where death itself existed. To go into that boundary was to enter the world of the dead. No one returns from the dead. If any pristinely ungifted person in Bandakar had gone into the boundary, they would have died. That was how they were sealed in.”

  “But they could banish people through the boundary,” Jennsen pressed. “That would have to mean that the boundary didn’t really affect them.”

  Richard was shaking his head even as she was protesting. “No. They were touched by death, the same as anyone. But there was a way left through the boundary—much like the one that once divided the three lands of the New World. I got through that boundary without being touched by it. There was a pass through it, a special, hidden place to get through the boundary. This one was the same.”

  Jennsen wrinkled her nose. “That makes no sense, then. If that was true, and it wasn’t hidden from them—since
they all knew of this passage through the boundary—then why couldn’t they all just leave if they wanted to? How could it seal the rest of them in, if they could send banished people through?”

  Richard sighed, wiping a hand across his face. It looked to Kahlan like he wished she hadn’t asked that question.

  “You know the area we passed a while back?” Richard asked her. “That place where nothing grew?”

  Jennsen nodded. “I remember.”

  “Well, Sabar said he came through another one, a little to the north of here.”

  “That’s right,” Kahlan said. “And it ran toward the center of the wasteland, toward the Pillars of Creation—just like the one we saw. They had to be roughly parallel.”

  Richard was nodding to what she was beginning to suspect. “And they were to either side of the notch into Bandakar. They weren’t very far apart. We’re in that place right now, between those two boundaries.”

  Friedrich leaned in. “But Lord Rahl, that would mean that if someone was banished from the Bandakaran Empire, when they emerged from that boundary they would find themselves trapped between the walls of these two boundaries out here, and there wasn’t much room between them. A person would have nowhere to go but…”

  Friedrich covered his mouth as he turned west, looking off into the gloom.

  “The Pillars of Creation,” Richard finished with quiet finality.

  “But, but,” Jennsen stammered, “are you saying that someone made it that way? Made these two boundaries deliberately to force anyone who was sent out of the Bandakaran Empire to go into that place—the Pillars of Creation? Why?”

  Richard looked into her eyes for a long moment. “To kill them.”

  Jennsen swallowed. “You mean, whoever banished these people wanted anyone they in turn sent out, anyone they exiled, to die?”

  “Yes,” Richard said.

  Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself. It had been hot for so long she could hardly believe that the weather had so suddenly turned cold.

  Richard swiped a lock of wet hair back off his forehead as he went on. “From what Adie told me once, boundaries have to have a pass to create balance on both sides, to equalize the life on both sides. I suspect that those down here in the Old World who banished these people wanted to give them a way to get rid of criminals and so told the people about the existence of the pass. But they didn’t want such people to be loosed on the rest of the world. Criminals or not, they were ungifted. They couldn’t be allowed to run free.”

  Kahlan immediately saw the problem with his theory. “But all three boundaries would have had to have a pass,” she said. “Even if the other two passes, in the remaining two boundaries, were secret, that still left the possibility that anyone exiled and sent through the notch might find one of them and so not try to escape through the Pillars of Creation where they would die. That left the chance that they might still escape into the Old World.”

  “If there really were three boundaries, such might be the case,” Richard said. “But I don’t think there were three. I think there really was only one.”

  “Now you’re not making any sense,” Cara complained. “You said there was the one going north and south blocking the pass, and then there were these two parallel ones out here, going east and west, to funnel anyone who came out of the empire through that first boundary, toward the Pillars of Creation where they would die.”

  Kahlan had to agree. It seemed that there might be a chance for someone to escape through one of the other two.

  “I don’t think there were three boundaries,” Richard repeated. “I think there was only one. That one boundary wasn’t straight—it was bent in half.” He held two fingers up, side by side. “The bottom of the bend went across the pass.” He pointed at the web between the two fingers. “The two legs extended out here, parallel, going off to where they ended at the Pillars.”

  Jennsen could only ask “Why?”

  “It seems to me, by how elaborate the whole design was, that the ones who sealed those people in wanted to give them a way to rid themselves of dangerous people, possibly knowing from what they had learned of their beliefs that they would balk at executing anyone. When these people were banished here to the Old World, they may have already had at least the core of the same beliefs they hold now. Those beliefs leave them completely vulnerable to those who are evil. Protecting their way of life, without executing criminals, meant they had to cast such people out of their community or be destroyed by them.

  “The banishment away from D’Hara and the New World, across the barrier into the Old World, must have terrified them. They stuck together as a means of survival, a common bond.

  “Those down here in the Old World who put them behind that boundary must have used those people’s fear of persecution to convince them that the boundary was meant to protect them, to keep others from harming them. They must have convinced those people that, since they were special, they needed such protection. That, along with their well-established need to stick together, had to have reinforced in them a terrible fear of being put out of their protected place. Banishment had a special terror to those people.

  “They must have felt the anguish of being rejected by the rest of the peoples of the world because they were ungifted, but, together as they were, they also felt safe behind the boundary.

  “Now that the seal is off, we have big problems.”

  Jennsen folded her arms. “Now that there’s more than one of us—more than one snowflake—you’re having worries about a snowstorm?”

  Richard fixed her with a reproachful look. “Why do you think the Order came in and took some of their people?”

  “Apparently,” Jennsen said, “to breed more children like them. To breed precious magic out of the race of man.”

  Richard ignored the heat in her words. “No, I mean why would they take men?”

  “Same reason,” Jennsen said. “To mate with regular women and give them ungifted children.”

  Richard drew in a patient breath and let it out slowly. “What did Owen say? The men were taken to see the women and told that if they didn’t follow orders those women would be skinned alive.”

  Jennsen hesitated. “What orders?”

  Richard leaned toward her. “What orders, indeed. Think about it,” he said, looking around at the rest of them. “What orders? What would they want ungifted men for? What is it they would want ungifted men to do?”

  Kahlan gasped. “The Keep!”

  “Exactly.” Richard’s unsettling gaze met each of them in turn. “Like I said, we have big problems. Zedd is protecting the Keep. With his ability and the magic of that place he can no doubt single-handedly hold off Jagang’s entire army.

  “But how is that skinny old man going to resist even one young ungifted man who is untouched by magic and comes up and grabs him by the throat?”

  Jennsen’s hand came away from her mouth. “You’re right, Richard. Jagang, too, has that book—The Pillars of Creation. He knows how those like me aren’t touched by magic. He tried to use me in that very way. That’s why he worked so hard to convince me that you were trying to kill me—so that I would think my only chance was to kill you first. He knew I was ungifted and couldn’t be stopped by magic.”

  “And, Jagang is from the Old World,” Richard added. “In all likelihood he would have known something about the empire beyond that boundary. For all we know, in the Old World Bandakar might be legendary, while those in the New World, beyond the great barrier for three thousand years, would never have known what happened to those people.

  “Now, the Order has been taking men from there and threatening them with the brutal murder of their defenseless women—women who are loved ones—if those men don’t follow orders. I think those orders are to assault the Wizard’s Keep and capture it for the Imperial Order.”

  Kahlan’s legs shook. If the Keep fell, they would lose the one real advantage, however limited, they had. With the Keep in the hands of the Order, a
ll those ancient and deadly things of magic would be available to Jagang. There was no telling what he might unleash. There were things in the Keep that could kill them all, Jagang included. He had already proven with the plague he’d unleashed that he was willing to kill any number to have his way, that he was willing to use any weapon, even if such weapons decimated his own people as well.

  Even if Jagang did nothing with the Keep, just him having control of it denied the D’Haran Empire the possibility of finding something there that could help them. That was, in addition to protecting the Keep, what Zedd was doing while he was there—trying to find something that would help them win the war, or at least find a way to put the Imperial Order back behind a barrier of some kind and confine them to the Old World.

  Without the Keep, their cause would likely be hopeless. Resistance would be nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Without the Keep on their side, all resistance to Jagang would eventually be crushed. His troops would pour into every part of the New World. There would be no stopping them.

  With trembling fingers Kahlan clutched her cloak closed. She knew what awaited her people, what it was like when the Imperial Order invaded and overpowered places. She had been with the army for nearly a year, fighting against them. They were like a pack of wild dogs. There was no peace with such animals after you. They would be satisfied only when they could tear you apart.

  Kahlan had been to cities, like Ebinissia, that had been overrun by Imperial Order soldiers. In a wild binge of savagery that went on for days, they had tortured, raped, and murdered every person trapped in the city, finally leaving it a wasteland of human corpses. None, no matter their age, had been spared.

  That was what the people of the New World had to look forward to.

  With enemy troops overrunning all of the New World, any trade that was not already disrupted would be brought to a standstill. Nearly all businesses would fail. The livelihood of countless people would be lost. Food would quickly become scarce, and then simply unavailable at any cost. People would have no means of supporting themselves and their families. People would lose everything for which they had worked a lifetime.