Naked Empire tsot-8

by Terry Goodkind

  Richard raked his hair back, trying to make sense of it. “Are you saying that he’s also my half brother?”

  Kahlan shrugged. “We don’t know that; we know only that he’s pristinely ungifted.” A wrinkle of puzzlement tightened on her brow. “By the way, back at the camp where those men attacked us, you were about to tell me something important you figured out when we were questioning the man that I touched, but you never got the chance.”

  “Yes”—Richard squinted, trying to recall what the man had told them—“it was about the one he said gave the orders sending him to capture us: Nicholas . . . Nicholas something.”

  “The Slide,” Kahlan reminded him. “Nicholas the Slide.”

  “Right. Nicholas told him where to find us—at the eastern edge of the wasteland, heading north. How could he know?”

  Kahlan mulled over the question. “Come to think of it, how could he know? We’ve seen no one, at least no one we were aware of, who could have reported where we were. Even if someone had seen us, by the time they reported our position and Nicholas sent the men, we would have been far from here. Unless Nicholas is close.”

  “The races,” Richard said. “It has to be that he’s the one watching us through the races. We’ve seen no one else. That’s the only way anyone could have known where we were. This Nicholas the Slide had to have seen us, to have seen where we were, through those birds that have been shadowing us. That’s how he was able to give our location along with the orders.”

  Richard rose as the man approached.

  “Lord Rahl,” Owen said, arms spread in a gesture of relief as he scurried forward, Cara holding a fistful of his coat at his shoulder to keep him reined in. “I’m so relieved you’re better. I never meant for the poison to hurt you as it did—and it never would have, had you had the antidote sooner. I tried to get to you sooner—I meant to—I swear I did, but all those men you slaughtered . . . it wasn’t my fault.” He added a small smile to the pleading expression he gave Kahlan. “The Mother Confessor knows, she understands.”

  Kahlan folded her arms as she looked up at Richard from under her frown. “It’s our fault, you see, that Owen didn’t make it to us sooner with the antidote to the poison. Owen got to our last camp, intending to hand over the antidote to cure you, only to find that we had murdered all those men and then up and left. So, it’s not his fault—his intentions were good and he tried; we spoiled his effort. Very inconsiderate of us.”

  Richard stared, not sure if Kahlan was giving him a sarcastic summation of what Owen had told her, or an accurate portrayal of Owen’s excuse, or if his head still wasn’t clear.

  Richard’s mood turned as dark as the thick overcast.

  “You poisoned me,” he said to Owen, wanting to be sure he had the man’s story straight, “and then you brought an antidote to where we were camped, but when you got to that camp, you came across the men who had attacked us and you found we had gone.”

  “Yes.” His cheer that Richard had it right abruptly faded. “Such savagery from the unenlightened is to be expected, of course.” Owen’s blue eyes filled with tears. “But still, it was so . . .” He hugged himself and closed his eyes as he rocked his weight from side to side, from one foot to the other. “Nothing is real. Nothing is real. Nothing is real.”

  Richard seized the man’s shirt at his throat and yanked him closer.

  “What do you mean, nothing is real?”

  Owen paled before Richard’s glare. “Nothing is real. We can’t know if what we see, if anything, is real or not. How could we?”

  “If you see it, then how can you possibly think it isn’t real?”

  “Because our senses all the time distort the truth of reality and deceive us. Our senses only delude us into the illusion of certainty. We can’t see at night—our sight tells us that the night is empty—but an owl can snatch up a mouse that with our eyes we couldn’t sense was there. Our reality says the mouse didn’t exist—yet we know it must, in spite of what our vision tells us—that another reality exists outside our experience. Our sight, rather than revealing truth, hides the truth from us—worse, it gives us a false idea of reality.

  “Our senses deceived us. Dogs can smell a world of things we can’t, because our senses are so limited. How can a dog track something we can’t smell, if our senses tell us what is real and what isn’t. Our understanding of reality, rather than being enhanced by, is instead limited by, our flawed senses.

  “Our bias causes us to mistakenly think we know what is unknowable—don’t you see? We aren’t equipped with adequate senses to know the true nature of reality, what is real and what isn’t. We only know a tiny sampling of the world around us. There is a whole world hidden from us, a whole world of mysteries we don’t see—but it’s there just the same, whether we see it or not, whether we have the wisdom to admit our inadequacies to the task of knowing reality, or not. What we think we know is actually unknowable. Nothing is real.”

  Richard leaned down. “You saw those bodies because they were real.”

  “What we see is only an apparent reality, mere appearances, a self-imposed illusion, all based on our flawed perception. Nothing is real.”

  “You didn’t like what you saw, so you choose, instead, to say it isn’t real?”

  “I can’t say what’s real. Neither can you. To say otherwise is unenlightened arrogance. A truly enlightened man admits his woeful ineffectiveness when confronting his existence.”

  Richard pulled Owen closer. “Such whimsy can only bring you to a life of misery and quaking fear, a life wasted and never really lived. You had better start using your mind for its true purpose of knowing the world around you, instead of abandoning it to faith in irrational notions. With me, you will confine yourself to the facts of the world we live in, not fanciful daydreams as concocted by others.”

  Jennsen tugged on Richard’s sleeve, pulling him back to hear her as she whispered. “Richard, what if Owen is right—not necessarily about the bodies, but about the general idea?”

  “You mean you think his conclusions are all wrong, and yet, somehow, the convoluted idea behind them must be right.”

  “Well, no—but what if what he says really is true? After all, look at you and me. Remember the conversation we had a while back, the one where you were explaining how I was born without eyes to see”—she glanced briefly at Owen and apparently abbreviated what she had intended to say—“certain things. Remember that you said that, for me, such things don’t exist? That reality is different for me? That my reality is different than yours?”

  “You’re getting what I said wrong, Jennsen. When most people get into a patch of poison ivy, they blister and itch. Some rare people don’t. That doesn’t mean the poison ivy doesn’t exist, or, more to the point, that its existence depends on whether or not we think it’s there.”

  Jennsen pulled him even closer. “Are you so sure? Richard, you don’t know what it’s like to be different from everyone else, to not see and feel what they do. You say there’s magic, but I can’t see it, or feel it. It doesn’t touch me. Am I to believe you on faith, when my senses say it doesn’t exist? Maybe because of that I can understand a little better what Owen means. Maybe he doesn’t have it all wrong. It makes a person wonder what’s real and what’s not, and if, like he says, it’s only your own point of view.”

  “The information our senses give us must be taken in context. If I close my eyes the sun doesn’t stop shining. When I go to sleep I’m consciously unaware of anything; that doesn’t mean that the world ceases to exist. You have to use the information from your senses in context along with what you’ve learned to be true about the nature of things. Things don’t change because of the way we think about them. What is, is.”

  “But, like he says, if we don’t experience something with our own senses, then how can we know it’s real?”

  Richard folded his arms. “I can’t get pregnant. So would you argue that for me women don’t exist.”

  Jennsen backed
away, looking a little sheepish. “I guess not.”

  “Now,” Richard said, turning back to Owen, “you poisoned me—you admit that much.” He tapped his fist against his own chest. “It hurts in here; that’s real. You caused it.

  “I want to know why, and I want to know why you brought the antidote. I’m not interested in what you think of the camp where the men who attacked us lay dead. Confine yourself to the matter at hand. You brought the antidote for the poison you gave me. That can’t be the end of it. What’s the rest?”

  “Well,” Owen stammered, “I didn’t want you to die, that’s why I saved you.”

  “Stop telling me your feelings about what you did and tell me instead what you did and why. Why poison me, and why then save me? I want the answer to that, and I want the truth.”

  Owen glanced around at the grim faces watching him. He took a breath as if to gather his composure.

  “I needed your help. I had to convince you to help me. I asked, before, for your help and you refused, even though my people have great need. I begged. I told you how important it was for them to have your help, but you still said no.”

  “I have my own problems I must deal with,” Richard said. “I’m sorry the Order invaded your homeland—I know how terrible that is—but I told you, I’m trying to bring them down and our doing so will only help you and your people in your effort to rid yourselves of them. You aren’t the only one who has had their home invaded by those brutes. We have men of the Order murdering our loved ones as well.”

  “You must help us, first,” Owen insisted. “You and those like you, the unenlightened ones, must free my people. We can’t do it ourselves—we are not savages. I heard what you all had to say about eating meat. Such talk made me ill. Our people are not like that—we can’t be, because we are enlightened. I saw how you murdered all those men back there. I need you to do that to the Order.”

  “I thought that wasn’t real?”

  Owen ignored the question. “You must give my people freedom.”

  “I already told you, I can’t!”

  “Now, you must.” He looked at Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and Friedrich. His gaze settled on Kahlan. “You must see to it that Lord Rahl does this—or he will die. I have poisoned him.”

  Kahlan seized Owen’s shirt. “You brought him the antidote to the poison.”

  Owen nodded. “That first night, when I told you all of my great need, I had just given him the poison.” His gaze returned to Richard. “You had just drunk it, within hours. Had you agreed to give my people the freedom they need, I would have given you the antidote then, and you would be free of the poison. It would have cured you.

  “But you refused to come with me, to help those who cannot help themselves, as is your duty to those in need. You sent me away. So, I did not offer you the antidote. In the time since, the poison has worked its way through your body. Had you not been selfish, you would have been cured back then.

  “Instead, the poison is now established in you, doing its work. Since it was so long since you drank the poison, the antidote I had with me was no longer enough to cure you, only to make you better for a while.”

  “And what will cure me?” Richard asked.

  “You will have to have more of the antidote to rid you of the rest of the poison.”

  “And I don’t suppose you have any more.”

  Owen shook his head. “You must give my people freedom. Only then, will you be able to get more of the antidote.”

  Richard wanted to shake the answers out of the man. Instead, he took a breath, trying to stay calm so that he could understand the truth of what Owen had done and then think of the solution.

  “Why only then?” he asked.

  “Because,” Owen said, “the antidote is in the place taken by the Imperial Order. You must rid us of the invaders if you are to be able to get to the antidote. If you want to live, you must give us our freedom. If you don’t, you will die.”

  Chapter 23

  Kahlan reached in to seize Owen by the throat. She wanted to strangle him, to choke him, to make him feel the desperate, panicked need of breath that Richard had endured, to make him suffer, to show him what it was like.

  Cara went for Owen as well, apparently having the same thought as Kahlan.

  Richard thrust his arm out, holding them both back.

  Holding Owen’s shirt in his other fist, Richard shook the man. “And how long do I have until I get sick again? How long do I have to live before your poison kills me?”

  Owen’s confused gaze flitted from one angry face to another. “But if you do as I ask, as is your duty, you will be fine. I promise. You saw that I brought you the antidote. I don’t wish to harm you. That is not my intent—I swear.”

  Kahlan could only think of Richard in crushing pain, unable to breathe.

  It had been terrifying. She couldn’t think of anything else but him going through it again, only this time never to wake.

  “How long?” Richard repeated.

  “But if you only—”

  “How long!”

  Owen licked his lips. “Not a month. Close to it, but not a month, I believe.”

  Kahlan tried to push Richard away. “Let me have him. I’ll find out—”

  “No.” Cara pulled Kahlan back. “Mother Confessor,” she whispered, “let Lord Rahl do as he must. You don’t know what your touch would do to one such as he.”

  “It might do nothing,” Kahlan insisted, “but it might still work, and then we can find out everything.”

  Cara restrained her with an arm around her waist that Kahlan could not pry off. “And if only the Subtractive side works and it kills him?”

  Kahlan stopped struggling as she frowned at Cara. “And since when have you taken up the study of magic?”

  “Since it might harm Lord Rahl.” Cara pulled Kahlan back farther away from Richard. “I have a mind, too, you know. I can think things through. Are you using your head? Where is this city? Where is the antidote within the city? What will you do if using your power kills this man and you are the one who condemns Lord Rahl to death when you could have had the information we need had you not touched him.

  “If you want, I will break his arms. I will make him bleed. I will make him scream in agony. But I will not kill him; I will keep him alive so that he can give us the information we need to rid Lord Rahl of this death sentence.

  “Ask yourself, do you really want to do this because you believe it will gain you the answers we need, or because you want to lash out, to strike out at him? Lord Rahl’s life may hang on you being truthful with yourself.”

  Kahlan panted from the effort of the struggle, but more from her rage.

  She wanted to lash out, to strike back, just as Cara said—to do whatever she could to save Richard and to punish his attacker.

  “I’ve had it with this game,” Kahlan said. “I want to hear the story—the whole story.”

  “So do I,” Richard said. He lifted the man by his shirt and slammed him down atop the crate. “All right, Owen, no more excuses for why you did this or that. Start at the beginning and tell us what happened, and what you and your people did about it.”

  Owen sat trembling like a leaf. Jennsen urged Richard back.

  “You’re frightening him,” she whispered to Richard. “Give him some room or he will never be able to get it out.”

  Richard took a purging breath as he acknowledged Jennsen’s words with a hand on her shoulder. He walked off a few paces, standing with his hands clasped behind his back as he stared off in the direction of the sunrise, toward the mountains Kahlan had so often seen him studying. It had been on the other side of the range of the smaller, closer mountains, tight in the shadows of those massive peaks thrusting up through the iron gray clouds, where they had found the warning beacon and first encountered the black-tipped races.

  The clouds that capped the sky all the way to the wall of those distant peaks hung heavy and dark. For the first time since Kahlan could remember, it lo
oked like a storm might be upon them. The expectant smell of rain quickened the air.

  “Where are you from?” Richard asked in a calm voice.

  Owen cleared his throat as he straightened his shirt and light coat, as if rearranging his dignity. He remained seated atop the crate.

  “I lived in a place of enlightenment, in a civilization of advanced culture . . . a great empire.”

  “Where is this noble empire?” Richard asked, still staring off into the distance.

  Owen stretched his neck up, looking east. He pointed at the far wall of towering peaks where Richard was looking.

  “There. Do you see that notch in the high mountains? I lived past there, in the empire beyond those mountains.”

  Kahlan remembered asking Richard if he thought they could make it over those mountains. Richard had been doubtful about it.

  He looked back over his shoulder. “What’s the name of this empire?”

  “Bandakar,” Owen said in a reverent murmur. He smoothed his blond hair to the side, as if to make himself a respectable representative of his homeland. “I was a citizen of Bandakar, of the Bandakaran Empire.”

  Richard had turned and was staring at Owen in a most peculiar manner.

  “Bandakar. Do you know what that name, Bandakar, means?”

  Owen nodded. “Yes. Bandakar is an ancient word from a time long forgotten. It means ‘the chosen’—as in, the chosen empire.”

  Richard seemed to have lost a little of his color. When his eyes met Kahlan’s, she could see that he knew very well what the word meant, and Owen had it wrong.

  Richard seemed to suddenly remember himself. He rubbed his brow in thought. “Do you—do any of your people—know the language that this ancient word, bandakar, is from?”

  Owen gestured dismissively. “We don’t know of the language; it’s long forgotten. Only the meaning of this word has been passed down, because it is so important to our people to hold on to the heritage of its meaning: chosen empire. We are the chosen people.”

  Richard’s demeanor had changed. His anger seemed to have faded away. He stepped closer to Owen and spoke softly.