Jebra looked relieved that someone else had finally objected.
Nicci smiled in a curious manner and raised an eyebrow. “There’s the trick of it.”
Without looking over, she lifted her arm back toward Ann, standing across the room in the shadows. “It’s the same method by which the Prelate and her Sisters of the Light know their version of the same gruel to be true. Prophecy, or the high priests, or some humble but deeply devout person has heard the intimate whispers of the divine, or has seen into a sacred vision He has sent them, or has been visited in dreams. There are even ancient texts that profess to have infallible knowledge of what is beyond the veil. Such lore is mostly a collection of the same kind of whispers and visions and dreams that in the distant past were set down as fact and have become ‘irrefutable’ simply because it is old.
“And how are we to verify the veracity of this testimony?” Nicci swept her arm out in a grand gesture. “Why, to question such things is the greatest sin of all: lack of faith!
“The very fact that the unknowable is unknowable is what they claim gives faith its virtue and makes it sacrosanct. After all, what would be the virtue in faith if that in which we have faith could be known? A person who can maintain absolute faith without any proof whatsoever must possess profound virtue. As a consequence, only those who take the leap of faith off the bedrock of the tangible into the emptiness of the imperceptible are righteous and worthy of an eternal reward.
“It’s as if you are told to leap from a cliff and have faith that you can fly, but you must not flap your arms because that would only betray a fundamental lack of faith and any lack of faith would infallibly insure that you would plummet to the ground, thus proving that a failure of faith is a personal flaw, and fatal.”
Nicci ran her fingers back into her blond hair, lifting it off her shoulders, and then, with a sigh, she let her arms drop. “The more difficult the teachings are to believe, the greater the required level of faith. Along with the commitment to a higher level of unquestioning faith comes a tighter bond to those who share that same faith, a greater sense of inclusion in the special group of the enlightened. Believers, because their beliefs are so manifestly mystic, become ever more estranged from the ‘unenlightened,’ from those who are suspect because they will not embrace faith. The term ‘nonbeliever’ becomes a commonly accepted form of condemnation, demonizing anyone who chooses”—Nicci tapped a finger to her temple—“to stick to the use of reason.
“Faith itself, you see, is the key—the magic wand that they wave over the bubbling brew they have concocted to render it ‘self-evident.’ ”
Ann, despite the glare of contempt for a Sister of the Light-turned-traitor-to-the-cause, offered no argument. Richard thought it a rare choice on her part, and one that at that moment was particularly wise.
“There,” Nicci said, shaking a finger as she paced, barefoot, “there is the crack in the Order’s imposing tower of teachings. There is the fatal flaw at the center of all convictions contrived in the imagination of men. Such things in the end, even though they may be sincere, are nothing more solid than the elaborate product of whimsy and self-deception. In the end, without the rock of reality, an insane person who hears voices in their head is equally sincere and equally credible.
“That is why the Order vaunts the sanctity of faith and teaches that you must dismiss the wicked impulse to use your head, that you must instead abandon yourself to your feelings. Once you surrender your life to blind faith in their account of the afterlife, they claim that then, and only then, the doorway to eternity will magically open for you and you will know all.
“In other words, knowledge is to be gained only through rejection of everything that actually comprises knowledge.
“This is why the Order equates faith with holiness, and why its absence is deemed to be sinful. This is why even questioning faith is heretical.
“Without faith, you see, everything they teach unravels.
“And since faith is the indispensable glue that binds together their teetering tower of beliefs, faith eventually gives birth to brutality. Without brutality to enforce it, faith ends up being nothing more than a fanciful daydream, or a queen’s empty belief that no one will attack her throne, that no enemy will breach the borders, that no force can overthrow her defenders, if she merely forbids it.
“After all, I don’t need to threaten you to get you to see that the water in that fountain is wet or that the walls of this room are constructed from stone, but the Order must threaten people to make them believe that an eternity of being dead will be an eternal delight, but only if they do as they’re told in this life.”
As she glared into the still waters of the fountain, Richard thought that Nicci’s blue eyes might turn that water to ice. The cold rage in those eyes was born of things she had seen in her life that he could not begin to imagine. On the dark and quiet evenings alone with her, the things she had been willing to confide in him were terrible enough.
“It’s a lot easier to convince people to die for your cause if you first make them eager to die,” Nicci said in a bitter voice. “It’s a lot easier to get boys to bare their breasts to arrows and swords if they have faith that doing so is a selfless act that will make the Creator smile and welcome them into the eternal glory in the afterworld.
“Once the Order teaches people to be true believers, what they have really done is to forge monsters who will not only die for the cause, but kill for it as well. True believers are consumed by an implacable hatred for those who don’t believe. There is no more dangerous, no more vicious, no more brutal an individual than one who has been blinded by the Order’s beliefs. Such a believer is not shaped by reason so he is not bound by it. As a consequence, there is no mechanism of restraint on his hatred. These are killers who will only too happily kill for the cause, absolutely secure in the knowledge they are doing the right and the moral thing.”
Nicci’s knuckles stood out white and bloodless as her fists tightened. Though the room seemed to ring with the sudden, terrible silence, the power of her words still echoed through Richard’s mind. He thought that the strength of the aura crackling around her might provoke a sudden lightning storm within the anteroom.
“As I said, the premise is pretty simple.” Nicci shook her head in bitter resignation, the emotion draining from her bleak pronouncement. “For most of the people of the Old World, and now the people of the New World, there is no choice but to follow the Order’s teachings. If their faith wavers they are sternly reminded of the eternity of unimaginable suffering that awaits the faithless. If that fails to work, then faith will be driven into them by the point of a sword.”
“But there must be some way to redeem these people,” Jebra said at last. “Isn’t there a way to bring them to their senses and get them to cast off the teachings of the Order?”
Nicci looked away from Jebra to stare off into the distance. “I was brought up from birth under the Order’s teachings and I came to my senses.”
Still staring off into a dark storm of memories, she fell silent for a moment, as if she were reliving her seemingly endless struggle to grasp at life, to escape the haunting clutches of the Order.
“But you cannot imagine how profoundly difficult it was for me to emerge from that realm of dark beliefs. I doubt that anyone who has not been lost in the suffocating world of the Order’s teachings can begin to grasp what it’s like to believe that your life is worthless and of no value, or grasp the shadow of terror that falls over you every time you try to turn away from what you have been taught is your only means of salvation.”
Her watery gaze hesitantly drifted to Richard. He knew. He had been there. He knew what it was like.
“I was redeemed,” she whispered in a broken voice, “but it was far from easy.”
Jebra looked encouraged by what Richard knew was no real encouragement. “But it worked for you,” she said, “so maybe it will work for others.”
“She is different from most of tho
se under the spell of the Order,” Richard said as he gazed into Nicci’s blue eyes, eyes that betrayed the naked emotion of how much he meant to her. “She was driven by a need to understand, to know, if what she had been taught to believe was true or if there was more to life, if there was something worth living for.
“Most of those taught by the Order have no such doubts. They block out those kinds of questions and instead tenaciously cling to their beliefs.”
“But what makes you think that they won’t change?” Jebra didn’t look ready to abandon the thread of hope. “If Nicci changed, then why can’t others?”
Still gazing into Nicci’s eyes, Richard said, “I think they’re able to block out any doubt in what they believe because they’ve internalized their indoctrination, no longer viewing it as specific ideas that have been drilled into them. They begin to experience the ideas they’ve been taught as feelings, which evolve into powerful emotional conviction. I think that’s the trick to the process. They are convinced within their own minds that they are experiencing original thought rather than those discrete ideas that have been taught to them as they grew up.”
Nicci cleared her throat as she looked away from Richard’s gaze and turned her attention once more to Jebra.
“I think Richard is right. I was aware of that very thing within my own thinking, aware of that inner conviction that was actually born of a carefully crafted manner of instruction.
“Some people who secretly value their lives will join in a revolt if they can see that there is a realistic chance to win—that’s what happened in Altur’Rang—but if there isn’t that chance then they know that they must repeat the words that the followers of the Order want to hear or risk losing their most valuable possession: life. Under the Order’s rule, you believe as they teach you, or you die. It’s as simple as that.
“There are people in the Old World working to join together those who will revolt, working to set the fires of freedom for those who want to seize an opportunity to control their own destiny. So there are those who truly want a chance at freedom and will act to gain it. Jagang, too, knows of such efforts and has sent troops to crush those revolts. But I also know only too well that most of the people of the Old World would never willingly cast off their beliefs; they see doing so as sinful. They will work to ruthlessly crush any uprising. If need be, they will cling to their faith right into their graves. The ones—”
Shota irritably lifted a hand, cutting Nicci off. “Yes, yes, some will, some won’t. Many wiffle-waffle. It doesn’t matter. Hoping for a revolt is pointless. It’s just idle wishing for salvation to arrive out of the blue.
“The legions of soldiers from the Old World are here, now, in the New World, so it’s the New World that we must worry about, not the Old World and what the mood for revolt might or might not be. The Old World, for the most part, believes in the Order, supports the Order, and encourages the Order to conquer the rest of the world.”
Shota glided forward, directing a meaningful look at Richard. “The only way for civilization to survive is to send the invading soldiers of the Order through that doorway to their longed-for eternity in the world of the dead. There is no redeeming those whose minds are lost to beliefs they are eager to die for. The only way to stop the Order and their teachings is to kill enough of them that they can’t continue.”
“Pain does have a way of changing people’s minds,” Cara said.
Shota gave the Mord-Sith a nod of approval. “If they come to truly understand without any doubt that they will not win, that their efforts will lead to certain death, then perhaps some will abandon their belief and cause. It very well could be that despite their faith in the teachings of the Order, few of them actually, deep down inside, really want to die to test it.
“But what of it? Does that really matter to us? What we do know is that a great many really are so fanatical that they welcome death. Hundreds of thousands have already died, proving that they really are willing to make that sacrifice. The rest of these men must be killed or they will kill us all and doom the rest of the world to a long, grinding descent into savagery.
“That is what we face. That is the reality of it.”
Chapter 16
Shota turned a hot look on Richard. “Jebra has shown you what will happen at the hands of these soldiers if you don’t stop them. Do you think those men entertain any rational notions of the meaning of their lives? Or that they might join in a revolt against the Order if given a chance? Hardly.
“I’m here to show you what has already happened to many so that you will understand what is is going to happen to everyone else if you don’t do something to stop it.
“A precise understanding of how the soldiers of the Order came to be, the choices they have made in their lives that brought them rampaging into the lives of innocent people, and the reasons behind those choices, are beyond being our concern. They are what they are. They are destroyers, killers. They are here. That is all that matters, now. They must be stopped. If they are dead, they will cease to be a threat. It’s as simple as that.”
Richard wondered how in the world she expected him to accomplish such a “simple” thing. She might as well be asking him to pull the moon down out of the sky and use it to crush the Imperial Order army.
As if reading his mind, Nicci spoke up again. “We may all agree with you, with everything you have come here to say—and in fact we didn’t need you to tell us what we already know, as if you think us children and only you are wise. But you don’t understand what you’re asking. The army that Jebra saw, the army that marched up into Galea and so easily crushed their defenses and killed so many people, is a minor and rather insignificant unit of the Imperial Order.”
“You can’t be serious,” Jebra said.
Nicci finally withdrew her glare from Shota and looked at Jebra. “Did you see any gifted?”
“Gifted? Why, no, I guess not,” she said after a moment’s thought.
“That’s because they didn’t warrant having their own gifted to command,” Nicci said. “If they had gifted, Shota would not have been able to so easily get in there and then take you right out of the place. But they had no gifted. They’re a relatively minor force and as such they’re considered expendable.
“That’s why the supplies took so long to reach them. All supplies first went north to Jagang’s main force. Once they had what they needed they then allowed supplies to go to other units, like the one up in Galea. They are only one of Jagang’s expeditionary forces.”
“But you don’t understand.” Jebra stood. “They were a huge army. I was there. I saw them with my own eyes.” She dry-washed her hands as she glanced around at everyone in the room. “I was there, working for them month after month. I saw how massive their numbers were. How could I not grasp the extent of their forces? I’ve told you about all they accomplished.”
Unimpressed, Nicci shook her head. “They were nothing.”
Jebra licked her lips, distress settling into her expression. “Perhaps I have not done an adequate job of describing it, of making clear just how many soldiers of the Order invaded Galea. I’m sorry that I’ve failed in making you understand how easily they crushed all those determined defenders.”
“You did a very good job of reporting accurately what you saw,” Nicci said in a gentler tone as she squeezed the woman’s shoulder in sympathetic reassurance. “But you only saw a part of the whole picture. The part you saw, frightening as it surely was, was insignificant compared to the rest of it. What you saw could not begin to prepare you for seeing the main force led by Emperor Jagang. I’ve spent a great deal of time in Jagang’s main encampments; I know what I’m talking about. Compared to their main force, the one you saw does not qualify as imposing.”
“She’s right,” Zedd said in a grim voice. “I hate to admit it, but she’s right. Jagang’s main army is vastly more powerful than the one that invaded Galea. I fought to slow their advance up through the Midlands as they steadily drove us back to
ward Aydindril, so I ought to know. Seeing them come is like watching the approach of uncountable minions of the underworld come to swallow the living.”
He looked stoic in his simple robes, standing at the top of the five steps, watching, listening to what others had to say. Richard knew, though, that his grandfather was anything but indifferent. Zedd’s way was often to listen to what others had to say before he had his say. In this instance there was no need for him to correct anything that he’d heard.
“If the Order troops in Galea have no gifted,” Jebra said, “then perhaps if some of those with the gift were to go there you could eliminate them. Perhaps you could save those poor people who are still alive, who have endured so much. It is not too late to at least save some of them.”
Richard thought that what she was really asking, but feared to speak aloud, was if this was only a minor force with no gifted among them, then why hadn’t some of those present done something to stop the slaughter she’d witnessed. Before Richard had ever left his woods of Hartland, he might very well have harbored the same vague sense of resentment and anger toward those who had not done anything to save them. Now he felt the torment of knowing how much more there was to it.
Nicci shook her head, dismissing the idea. “It’s not so feasible as it might seem. The gifted might be able to take out a large number of the enemy and for a time create havoc, but even this expeditionary force has sufficient numbers to withstand any attack by the gifted. Zedd, for example, could use wizard’s fire to mow down ranks of soldiers, but as he paused to conjure more the enemy would be sending wave upon wave of men at him. They might lose a lot of men, but they are not deterred by staggering casualties. They would keep coming. They would throw rank after rank of men into the conflagration. Despite how many would die, they would soon enough overwhelm even one as talented as the First Wizard. And then where would we be?
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