Naked Empire tsot-8

by Terry Goodkind

  “After a year and a half of hiding, of meeting with others, we learned that the Order had spread to other places in our empire, taken other towns and cities. The Wise One and the speakers went into hiding. We discovered that some towns and cities had invited the Order to come in, to be among them, in an attempt to appease them and keep them from doing harm.

  “No matter how hard our people tried, their concessions failed to placate the belligerence of the men of the Order. We could not understand why this was true.

  “In some of the largest cities, though, it was different. The people there had listened to the speakers of the Order and had come to believe that the cause of the Imperial Order was the same as our cause—to bring an end to abuse and injustice. The Order convinced these people that they abhorred violence, that they had been enlightened as were our people, but they had to turn to violence to defeat those who would oppress us all. They said that they were champions of our people’s cause of enlightenment. The people there rejoiced that they were at last in the hands of saviors who would spread our words of enlightenment to the savages who did not yet live by peace.”

  Richard, a thunderstorm building, could hold his tongue no longer. “And even after all the brutality, these people believed the words of the Imperial Order?”

  Owen spread his hands. “The people in those places were swayed by the words of the Order—that they were fighting for the same ideals as we lived by. They told our people in those cities that they had only acted as they did because my town and some of the other places like it had sided with the savages from the north—with the D’Haran Empire.

  “I had heard this name before—the D’Haran Empire. During the year and a half that I lived in the hills with the other men, I sometimes traveled out of our land, out into the surrounding places, to see what I could discover that might help us to cast the Imperial Order out of Bandakar. While I was out of my land, I went to some of the cities in the Old World, as I learned it was called. In one place, Altur’Rang, I heard whispers of a great man from the north, from the D’Haran Empire, who brought freedom.

  “Other of my men also went out to other places. When we returned, we all told each other what we had seen, what we had heard. All those who came back told of the same thing, told of hearing of one called Lord Rahl, and his wife, the Mother Confessor, who fought the Imperial Order.

  “Then, we learned where the Wise One was being kept safe, as were most of our greatest speakers. It was in our greatest city, a place where the Order had not yet come. The Order was busy with other places and so they were in no hurry. My people were going nowhere—they had nowhere to go.

  “The men who were with me wanted me to be their speaker, to go to talk with these great speakers, to convince them that we must do something to stop the Imperial Order and cast them out of Bandakar.

  “I journeyed to the great city, a place I had never been before, and I was inspired at seeing a place that such a great culture as ours had built. A culture about to be destroyed, if I could not convince these great speakers and the Wise One to think of something to do to stop the Order.

  “I spoke before them with great urgency. I told them of all the Order had done. I told them of the men I had in hiding, waiting for word of what they were to do.

  “The great speakers said that I cannot know the true nature of the Order from what I and a few men had seen—that the Imperial Order was a vast nation and we saw only a tiny speck of their people. They said that men cannot do such cruel acts as I described because it would cause them to shrink back in horror before they could complete them. To prove it, they suggested that I try to skin one of them. I admitted that I could not, but I told them that I had seen the men of the Order do this.

  “The speakers scorned my insistence that it was real. They said I must always keep in mind that reality is not for us to know. They said that the men of the Imperial Order were probably frightened that we might be a violent people, and simply wanted to test our resolve by tricking us into believing that the things I described were real so that they could see how we reacted—if peace was really our way, or if we would attack them.

  “The great speakers said, then, that I could not know if I really saw all the things I said, and that even if I did, I could not judge if they were for the bad, or the good—that I was not the person to judge the reasons of men I did not know, that to do so would be to believe that I was above them, and to put myself above them would be an act of prejudiced hostility.

  “I could only think of all the things I had seen, of the men with me who all agreed that we must convince the great speakers to act to preserve our empire. I could only see in my mind the face of Luchan. And then, I thought of Marilee in the hands of this man. I thought of the sacrifice she had made, and how her life was cast away into this horror for nothing.

  “I stood up before the great speakers and screamed that they were evil.”

  Cara snorted a laugh. “Seems you can tell what’s real, when you put your mind to it.”

  Richard shot her a withering glare.

  Owen glanced up and blinked. His thoughts had been so distant as he told his story that he hadn’t really heard her. He looked up at Richard.

  “That was when they banished me,” he said.

  “But the boundary seal had failed,” Richard said. “You had already come and gone through the pass. How could they enforce a banishment with the boundary down?”

  Owen waved dismissively. “They do not need the wall of death. Banishment is in a way a sentence of death—the death of the person as a citizen of Bandakar. My name would be known throughout the empire, at least what was left of it, and every person would shun me. I would be turned away from every door. I was one of the banished. No one would want to have any contact with me. I was now an outcast. It does not matter that they could not put me beyond the barrier; they put me beyond my people. That was worse.

  “I went back to my men in the hills to collect my things and confess to them that I had been banished. I was going to go out beyond our homeland, as I had been commanded by the will of our people through our great speakers.

  “But my men, those in the hills, they would not see me go. They said that the banishment was wrong. These men had seen the things I had seen. They had wives, mothers, daughters, sisters who had been taken away. They all had seen their friends murdered, seen the men skinned alive and left to suffer in agony as they died, seen the races come to circle over them as they hung on those poles. They said that since all our eyes had seen these things, then these things must be true, must be real.

  “They all said that we had gone into the hills because we love our land and want to restore the peace we once had. They said that the great speakers were the ones whose eyes did not see and they were condemning our people to murder at the hands of savage men and those of our people who lived to a cruel life under the rule of the Imperial Order, to be used as breeding stock or as slaves.

  “I was shocked that these men would not reject me for being banished—that they wanted me to stay with them.

  “It was then that we decided that we would be the ones to do something, to come up with the plan we always wanted the speakers to decide. When I asked what would be our plan, everyone said the same thing.

  “They all said that we must get Lord Rahl to come and give us freedom. They all spoke with one voice.

  “We decided, then, what we would do. Some men said that one such as the Lord Rahl would come to cast out the Order when we asked. Others thought you might not be willing, since you are unenlightened and not of our ways, not of our people. When we considered that possibility, we decided that we must have a way to insure you would have to come, should you refuse us.

  “Since I was banished, I said that it was upon me to do this thing. Except to live in the hills with my men, I could have no life among our people unless we cast out the Imperial Order and our ways were restored to us. I told the men that I did not know where I could find the Lord Rahl, but that I would
not give up until I did so.

  “First, though, one of the men, an older man who had spent his life working with herbs and cures, made me the poison I put into your waterskin. He made me the antidote as well. He told me how the poison worked, and how it could be counteracted, since none of us wished to consider that it would come to murder, even of an unenlightened man.”

  By the sidelong look Richard gave her, Kahlan knew that he wanted her to hold her tongue, and knew that she was having difficulty doing so. She redoubled her effort.

  “I was worried about how I would find you,” Owen said to Richard, “but I knew I had to. Before I could go in search of you, though, I had to hide the rest of the antidote, as was our plan.

  “While in a city where the Order had won the people to their side, I heard some people at a market say that it was a great honor that the very man who had come to their city was the most important man among all those of the Imperial Order in Bandakar. The thought struck me that this man might know something of the man the Order hated most—Lord Rahl.

  “I stayed in the city for several days, watching the place where this man was said to be. I watched the soldiers come and go. I saw that they sometimes took people in with them, and then later the people came back out.

  “One day I saw people come back out and they did not appear to be harmed, so I made my way close to them to hear what they might say. I heard them talk that they had seen the great man himself. I could not hear much of what they said of their visit inside, but none said that they were hurt.

  “And then I saw the soldiers come out, and I suspected that they might be going to get more people to take them in to see this great man, so I went before them into a central gathering square. I waited, then, near the open isles between the public benches. The soldiers rushed in and gathered up a small crowd of people and I was swept up with the others.

  “I was terrified of what would happen to me, but I thought this might be my only chance to go in the building with this important man, my only chance to see what he looked like, to see the place where he was so I could know where to sneak back and listen, as I had learned to do when living in the hills with my men. I had resolved to do this to see if I could learn any information on Lord Rahl. Still, I was trembling with worry when they took us all into the building and down halls and up stairs to the top floor.

  “I feared that I was being led to the slaughter and wanted to run, but I thought, then, of my men back in the hills, depending on me to find the Lord Rahl and get him to come to Bandakar and give us freedom.

  “We were taken through a heavy door into a dim room that filled me with fear because it stank of blood. The windows on two walls of the stark room were closed off by shutters. I saw that across the room there was a table with a broad bowl and, nearby, a row of fat, sharpened wooden stakes standing nearly as tall as my chest. They were stained dark with blood and gore.

  “Two women and a man with us fainted. Out of anger, the soldiers kicked them in the heads. When the people did not rise, the soldiers dragged them away by their arms. I saw blood trails smear along the floor behind them. I didn’t want to have my head caved in by the boot of one of these gruesome men, so I resolved not to faint.

  “A man swept into the room, suddenly, like a chill wind. I had not ever been afraid of any man, even Luchan, like I was afraid of this man. He was dressed in layer upon layer of cloth strips that flowed out behind as he moved. His jet black hair was swept back and smoothed with oils that made it glisten. His nose seemed to stick out even more than it would have, had he not slicked back his hair. His small black eyes were rimmed in red. When those beady eyes fixed on me, I had to remind myself that I had vowed not to faint.

  “He peered at each person in turn as he slowly walked past us, as if he were picking out a turnip for dinner. It was then, as his knobby fingers came out from his odd clothes to point in a waving manner at one person and then another until he had pointed out five people, that I saw that his fingernails were all painted as black as his hair.

  “His hand waved, dismissing the rest of us. The soldiers moved between the five people this man had pointed out and the rest of us. They started pushing us toward the door, but just then, before we could be ushered out, a commander with a nose that had been flattened to the side, as if from being broken repeatedly, came in and said that the messenger had arrived. The man with the black hair ran his black nails back through his black hair and told the commander to tell the messenger to wait, that by morning he would have the latest information.

  “I was then led out and down the stairs along with the rest of the people. We were taken outside and told to go away, that our services wouldn’t be needed. The soldiers laughed when they said this. I left with the others, so as not to make the men angry. The people all whispered about having seen the great man himself. I could think only of what the latest information might be.

  “Later, after dark, I sneaked back, and in the rear of the building I discovered, behind a gate through a high wooden fence, a narrow alleyway. In the dark, I entered the alley and hid myself inside a doorway entrance to the back hall of the building. There were passageways beyond, and, in the candlelight, I recognized one passage as the place I had been earlier.

  “It was late and there was no one in the halls. I moved deeper into the passageways. Rooms and recesses lined each side of the hall, but with the late hour no one came out. I sneaked up the stairs and crept to the big thick door to the room where I had been taken.

  “It was there, in that dark hall before the big door, that I heard the most horrifying cries I have ever heard. People were begging and weeping for their lives, crying for mercy. One woman pleaded endlessly to be put to death to end her suffering.

  “I thought I would vomit, or faint, but one thought kept me still and hidden, kept me from running as fast as my legs would carry me. That was the thought that this was the fate of all my people if I did not help them by bringing Lord Rahl.

  “I stayed there all night, in a dark recess in a hall across from the big door, listening to those poor people in unimaginable agony. I don’t know what the man was doing to them, but I thought I would die of sorrow for their slow suffering. The whole of the night, the moans of agony never ceased.

  “I shivered in my hiding place, weeping, and told myself that it wasn’t real, that I shouldn’t be afraid of what was not real. I imagined the people’s pain, but told myself that I was putting my imagination on top of my senses—the very thing I had been taught was wrong. I put my thoughts to Marilee, the times we had been together, and ignored the sounds that were not real. I could not know what was real, what these sounds really were.

  “Early in the morning the commander I had seen before returned. I peeked carefully out from my dark hiding place. The man with the black hair came to the door. I knew it was him because when his arm came out of the room to hand the man a scrolled paper, I saw his black fingernails.

  “The man with the black hair said to the commander with the flattened, crooked nose, he called him ‘Najari,’ that he had found them. That’s what he said—‘them.’ Then he said, ‘They’ve made it to the east edge of the wasteland and are now heading north.’ He told the man to give the messenger the orders right away. Najari said, ‘Shouldn’t be long, then, Nicholas, and you will have them and we’ll have the power to name our price.’ ”

  Chapter 25

  Richard spun around. “Nicholas? You heard him say that name?”

  Owen blinked in surprise. “Yes. I’m sure of it. He said Nicholas.”

  Kahlan felt a weary hopelessness settle over her, like the cold, wet mist.

  Richard gestured urgently. “Go on.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure that they were talking about you—about the Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor—when the commander said ‘them,’ but by the grim excitement in their voices I had the impression that it was so. Their voices reminded me of the first time the Order came, at the way Luchan smiled at me in a way I had never seen be
fore, like he might eat me.

  “I thought that this information was my best chance to find you. So I started out at once.”

  Borne on a light gust, drizzle replaced the morning mist. Kahlan realized that she was shivering with the cold.

  Richard pointed at the man sitting on the ground not far away, the man with the notch in his right ear, the man Kahlan had touched. Some of the storm within Richard boiled to the surface.

  “There is the man the orders from Nicholas were sent to. He brought with him those men you saw at our last camp. Had we not defended ourselves, had we put our own sincere hatred of violence above the nature of reality, we would be as lost as Marilee.”

  Owen stared at the man. “What is his name?”

  “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter to me in the least. He fought for the Imperial Order—fought to uphold a view of all life, including his, as unimportant, interchangeable, expendable in the mindless pursuit of an ideal that holds individual lives as worthless in themselves—a tenet that demands sacrifice to others until you are nothing.

  “He fights for the dream of everybody to be nobody and nothing.

  “The beliefs of the Order hold that you had no right to love Marilee, that everyone is the same and so your duty should be to marry someone who could best use your help. In that way, through selfless sacrifice, you would properly serve your fellow man. Despite how you struggle not to see what’s before your eyes, Owen, I think somewhere beneath all your regurgitated teachings, you know that that is the greatest horror brought by the Order—not their brutality, but their ideas. It is their beliefs that sanction brutality, and yours that invite it.

  “He didn’t value his own life, who he was; why should I care what his name was. I give him what was his greatest ambition: nothingness.”

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