Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 44

The door opened a crack. One bloodshot eye peered out into the dingy hall.

“You have a room? My wife and I are looking for a room.” Before the man could close the door, Richard quickly added, “We were told you had one.”

“What of it?”

Despite it being self-evident, Richard answered politely. “We’ve no place to stay.”

“Why bring your problems to me?”

Richard could hear angry words going back and forth between a man and woman upstairs. Behind several of the doors in the hall, babies wailed without pause. The heavy odor of rancid oil hung in the dank air. Out the door at the back standing open to the narrow alley, young children, being chased by older children, squealed as they ran through the cold rain.

Richard spoke without expectation into the narrow slit. “We need a room.”

A dog not far up the alleyway barked with monotonous persistence.

“Lots of people need a room. I only have one. I can’t give it to you.”

Nicci eased Richard aside and put her face close to the crack.

“We have the money for the first week.” She shoved her hand against the door when he started to shut it. “It’s a public room. Your duty is to help the public get rooms.”

The man shouldered his weight into the door, shutting it in her face.

Richard turned away as Nicci began knocking. “Forget it,” he said. “Let’s go get a loaf of bread.”

Nicci usually followed his lead without admonishment, challenge, or even comment, but this time, instead of minding him, she rapped persistently on the door. Layers of peeling paint, every color from blue to yellow to red, fell from under her knuckles.

“It’s your duty,” Nicci called to the closed door. “You’ve no right to turn us away.” No answer came. “We’re going to report you.”

The door opened a crack again. The eye glared out with menace.

“Has he a job?”

“No, but—”

“You go away. The both of you—or I’ll report you!”

“For what, might I ask?”

“Look, lady, I got a room, but I got to keep it for people at the top of the list.”

“How do you know we’re not at the top of the list?”

“Because if you were you would have said so first off and showed me the approval you got with a seal on it. People at the head of the list have been waiting a long time for a place. You’re no better than a thief, trying to take the place of a good citizen who’s followed the law. Now, go away, or I will take down your names for the lodging inspector.”

The door slammed shut again. The threat of having their names taken down appeared to take some of the fight out of Nicci. She huffed a sigh as they walked away, the bowed floor creaking and groaning underfoot. At least they had been able to get in out of the rain for a brief time.

“We will have to keep looking,” she told him. “If you had a job, first, it would probably help. Maybe tomorrow you can look for a job while I keep looking for a room.”

Out in the cold rain once more, they crossed the muddy street to the cobbled walkway on the other side. There were yet more places to check, though Richard didn’t hold out any hope of getting a room. They’d had doors shut in their faces more times than he could count. Nicci wanted a room, though, so they kept looking.

The weather was unusually cold for this far south in the Old World, Nicci had told him. People said the cold spell and rain would soon pass. A few days before it had been muggy and warm, so Richard had no reason to doubt their judgment. It was disorienting for him to see woods and fields of lush green vegetation in the dead of winter. There were some trees with limbs bare for the season, but most were in full leaf.

As far south as they were in the Old World, it never got cold enough for water to freeze. People only blinked dumbly when he spoke of snow. When Richard explained snow as flakes of frozen white water that fell from the sky and covered the ground with a cottony blanket, some people turned huffy, thinking he was making a joke at their expense.

He knew that back home winter would be raging. Despite the turmoil around him, Richard felt an inner tranquillity knowing that Kahlan was most likely to be warm and snug in the house he had built; in that light, nothing in his new life was of enough importance to distress him. She had food to eat, firewood to keep her warm, and Cara for company. For now, she was safe.

Winter was wearing on and in spring she would be able to leave, but, for now, Richard was confident that she was safe. That, and his thoughts and memories of her, were his only solace.

People without rooms huddled in the alleyways, using whatever scrap of solid material they could find to prop up over themselves for a roof. Walls were fashioned from sodden blankets. He supposed that he and Nicci could continue to do the same, but he feared Nicci falling ill in the cold and wet—feared that then Kahlan, too, would fall ill.

Nicci checked the paper she carried. “These places on this register they gave us are all supposed to be available for people newly arrived—not just for people on a list. They need workers; they should be more diligent in seeing to it that places are available. Do you see, Richard? Do you see how hard it is for ordinary people to get along in life?”

Richard, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain, asked, “So, how do we get on a list?”

“We will have to go to a lodging office and request a room. They can put us on a housing list.”

It sounded simple, but matters were proving far more complex than they sounded.

“If there aren’t enough rooms, how will being on a list get us a place to stay?”

“People die all the time.”

“There’s work here, that’s why we came—that’s why everyone else has come. I’ll work hard and then we can afford to pay more. We still have a little money. We just need to find a place that wants to rent a room for the right price—without all this list foolishness.”

“Really, Richard, are you that inhumane? How would those less fortunate ever get rooms, then? The Order sets the prices to stop profiteers. They make sure there is no favoritism. That makes it fair for all. We just need to get on a list for a room, and then everything will be fine.”

Watching the glistening cobbles before him as he walked, Richard wondered how long they would be without a place until their name worked its way to the top of a list. It looked to him as if a lot of people would need to die before his and Nicci’s names came up for a room—with more yet waiting in turn for them to die.

He stepped first to one side and then the other to avoid bumping into the river of people swirling past, making their way in the opposite direction while trying to stay out of the mud of the street. He considered again staying outside the city—a lot of people did that. But there were outlaws and desperate people aplenty who preyed on those who were forced to stay out in the open where there were no city guards. Were Nicci not opposed to the idea, Richard would have found a place farther out and built a shelter, perhaps with some other people so that they could together discourage trouble.

Nicci wasn’t interested in the idea. Nicci wanted to be in the city.

Multitudes came to the city looking for a better life. There were lists to get on, and lines to wait in to see official people. You had a better chance of doing those things if you had a room in the city, she said.

It was getting late in the day. The line at the bakery was out the door and partway down the block.

“Why are all these people in line?” Richard whispered to Nicci. It was the same every day when they went to buy bread.

She shrugged. “I guess there aren’t enough bakeries.”

“Seems like with all the customers, more people would want to open bakeries.”

Nicci leaned close, a scolding scowl darkening her brow. “The world isn’t as simple as you would like it to be, Richard. It used to be that way in the Old World. Man’s evil nature was allowed to flourish. People set their own prices for goods—with greed being their only interest, not the good of their fellow man. Only the well-to-do could afford to buy bread. Now, the Order sees to it that everyone gets needed goods for a fair price. The Order cares about everyone, not just those with unfair advantages.”

She always seemed so impassioned when she spoke about the evil nature of people. Richard wondered why a Sister of the Dark would care about evil, but he didn’t bother to ask.

The line wasn’t moving very fast. The woman in front of him, suspicious of their whispering, scowled back over her shoulder.

Richard met her glare with a broad smile.

“Good afternoon, ma’am.” Her somber scowl faltered in the light of his beaming grin. “We’re new in town”—he gestured behind—“my wife and I. I’m looking for work. We need a room, though. Would you know how a young couple, strangers to the city, could go about getting a room?”

She half turned, holding her canvas bag in both hands, letting it pull her arms straight as she leaned her shoulders against the wall. Her bag held only a yellow wedge of cheese. Richard’s smile and his friendly conversational tone—artificial though they were—were apparently so out of the ordinary that she seemed unable to maintain her gruff demeanor.

“You have to have a job if you hope to get a room. There aren’t enough rooms in the city, what with all the new workers come for the abundance provided by the wisdom of the Order. If you’re able-bodied, you need to have work, then they’ll put your name on the list.”

Richard scratched his head and kept smiling as the line slowly shuffled along. “I’m eager to work.”

“Easier to get a room if you can’t work,” the woman confided.

“But, I thought you just said you had to have a job if you were to have any hope of getting a room.”

“That’s true, if you’re able, like you look to be. Those folks with a greater need, because they can’t do for themselves, are rightly entitled to benevolence and to be put higher on the list—like my husband, the poor man. He’s afflicted terrible like with consumption.”

“I’m so sorry,” Richard said.

She nodded with the weight of her burden. “It’s mankind’s wretched lot to suffer. Nothing can be done about it, so there’s no use trying. Only in the next life will we get our reward. In this life, it’s the duty of every person with ability to help those unfortunate souls with needs. In that way the able earn their reward in the next life.”

Richard didn’t argue. She shook a finger at him.

“Those who can work owe it to those who can’t to do their best for the good of all.

“I can work,” Richard assured her. “We’re from . . . a little place. We’re simple folks—from farming stock. We don’t know much about how to go about things like getting work in the city.”

“The Order has brought the people a great abundance of work,” a man behind Nicci said, drawing Richard’s attention. The man’s oiled canvas coat was buttoned tight at his throat. His big brown eyes blinked slowly, like a cow as it chewed its cud. The way his jaw wobbled sideways as he spoke only added to the impression. “The Order welcomes all workers to our struggle, but you must be mindful of the needs of others—as the Creator Himself wishes—and go about getting work in the proper fashion.”

Richard, his stomach grumbling with hunger, listened as the man explained. “You first need to belong to a citizen workers’ group; they protect the rights of citizens of the Order. You’ll have to go before a review assembly for approval to join the workers’ group, and a fitness panel to hear from a spokesman from the workers’ citizen group who can vouch for you. You must do this before you can go for a job.”

“Why can’t I just go to a place and show myself? Why can’t they hire me, if I fit their needs?”

“Just because you’re from the country, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be mindful of contributing toward the greater good of the Order.”

“Of course not,” Richard said. “I’ve always worked for myself, though—farming to bring food to my fellow man, as is our duty. I don’t know how businesses do things.”

The big brown eyes paused their blinking. The man peered suspiciously for a moment, then his eyes finally went moony again. His jaw resumed its wobbling as he chewed his words.

“It’s the primary responsibility of business to be sensitive to the needs of the people, to contribute to the public welfare, to be equitable. The review board helps see to this. There is much more involved than the narrow goals of businesses.”

“I see,” Richard said. “Well, I’d be grateful if you could tell me how to go about it properly.” He glanced briefly at Nicci. “I want to be a good citizen and do things right.”

By the man’s pride in the explanation, and the way his big eyes blinked faster as he laid it all out, Richard expected that the man was somehow involved in the labyrinthine process. Richard didn’t ask how you got a spokesman from the citizen workers’ group to vouch for you. The line inched forward as the man explained the finer details of different sorts of work, what each required, and how it was all for the benefit of those living within the Order and under the grace of the Creator.

As he droned on, delivering his information with smug satisfaction, Nicci watched Richard discreetly, and without comment, as he listened to the procedures. She looked as if she was expecting him to suddenly turn from polite to deadly. Richard knew there could be no point to a battle with this man, so he remained polite.

It turned out that the man, named Mr. Gudgeons, seemed to know the most about the quarry workers. Since Richard knew little about quarries, he passed the time as they stood in line by asking a few questions that pleased Mr. Gudgeons to answer—at great length.

The store ran out of bread and closed before they got any. The line of people dissolved into the downpour, mumbling to one another as they went about their woeful lot in life. Richard thanked the woman and Mr. Gudgeons before he and Nicci moved on.

Richard paused at a cross street while Nicci studied her paper with the list of rooms. All around, the blocky shapes of buildings rose out of the gloom. Red paint on the side of one brick building was so faded that it left the figure painted there looking like a blushing ghost. The faded whitewash of words beneath the vanishing man were no longer legible.

Passing men gazed at Nicci in her wet clinging clothes, never seeing her face. Her hair was plastered to her skull, her jaw quivered, and her hands trembled, yet she didn’t complain about the cold, as did everyone else. They had been told that they couldn’t get another list, with any new rooms that might have recently become available, until the next day, so Nicci was trying to keep this one whole, but in the rain it was a losing battle.

Mangy horses slogged through the mud, some of the wagons they pulled squeaking and groaning under the weight of a load. Only the main thoroughfares, like the one they were on, were wide enough to allow teams of horses and full-size wagons to easily pass in both directions. Some streets were only wide enough for wagons to go in one direction. Some of those, with no room to pull aside, were choked off by broken-down wagons. Richard saw a dead horse in one narrow street, the rotting animal, attended by a cloud of flies, still hitched to its wagon as it awaited someone to come haul it away. The blocked streets only added to the congestion of the others. Some streets, were wide enough only for handcarts. In many of the narrower passageways only foot traffic could fit.

The smell of garbage and the stench of streets that also functioned as open sewers had been enough to gag Richard for the first week until he’d become numb to it.

The alleyways where he and Nicci had slept were the worst. The rain only served to flush the filth out of every hole and carry it out into the open, but at least as long as he was standing it washed off some of the dirt.

All the cities Richard had seen after they’d entered the Old World and traveled south from Tanimura were similar to this one, all suffering under grinding poverty and inhuman conditions. Everything seemed caught in a timeless trap, a morass of rot, as if the cities had once been vibrant with life and people striving to fulfill dreams, had once been places of hope and ambition, but somewhere the dreams had disintegrated into a gray pall of stagnation and decay. No one seemed to much care. Everyone seemed in a daze, biding their time, waiting for their lot in life to improve without even having a concept of the shape of that better life or how it might come to be. They existed on disembodied faith, confident only that the afterlife would be perfect.

The cities Richard had seen were startlingly similar to what Richard envisioned the future held for the New World under the yoke of the Order.

This place, though, was the single largest city Richard had ever seen.

He would never have believed the size of it had he not seen it himself.

Dilapidated buildings entangled by streets teeming with people sprawled over a sweep of low hills, across a broad bottomland, for miles along the convergence of two rivers. Squat ramshackle huts built haphazardly of wattle and daub, scraps of wood, or salvaged mud and straw bricks beset the city’s core to a great distance out into the surrounding land, like fetid scum surrounding a rotting log in a stagnant pond.

It was the city of Altur’Rang—the namesake of the land which was now the heart of the Old World and the Imperial Order—the home city of Emperor Jagang.

When they had first entered the Old World on their way south toward Altur’Rang, Richard and Nicci had stopped at the northernmost large city in the Old World, Tanimura, where the Palace of the Prophets had once stood.

Tanimura, one of the last places in the Old World to fall under the rule of the Imperial Order, was a grand place, with wide boulevards lined with trees and ornate buildings soaring several stories high, faced with columns and arches and windows that let in the light. Tanimura, as large as it was, turned out to be but an outpost of the Old World, far enough away that the rot was only now reaching it.

For a span of a little over a month, Richard had found work in Tanimura as a mason’s tender, one of a dozen, hauling stone and mixing mortar for a squat, unattractive building. The masons had simple huts the workers and their families lived in, so Nicci had shelter. The master came to trust Richard to keep up with his masons. When one of the stonecutters fell sick, Richard was asked to stand in at squaring the blocks of granite for the masons.

He found holding a chisel and mallet in his hands, cutting stone—shaping it to his will—a revelation. In some ways, it was like carving wood . . . but somehow much more.

From time to time, the master stood with fists on his hips, watching Richard chisel square edges into the hard granite. Occasionally, in a gruff voice, he would make minor corrections to Richard’s method. After a time, as the master saw that Richard took to the job and could cut a block square and true, he no longer bothered watching. Before long Richard’s blocks were chosen first by the masons as cornerstones.

Other stonecutters arrived to do more demanding work—the adornments.

When they had first shown up, Richard had been eager to see their work. They cut into the face of blocks, meant to surround the entrance, a large flame representing the Light of the Creator. Below that, they carved a crowd of cowering people.

Richard had seen a number of stone carvings in the various places he had been, from the Confessors’ Palace in Aydindril to the People’s Palace in D’Hara, but he had never seen anything like the figures he saw being cut on that building in Tanimura. They were not graceful, or grand, or inspiring, but just the opposite. They were distorted, thick-limbed, cringing figures recoiling below the Light. Richard was told by one of the artisans that this was the only proper representation of mankind—profane, hideous, sinful.

Richard kept his mind on cutting square stones.

When the stonework to the Order’s headquarters building was finished, the job ended. The carpenters didn’t need any more help. The artisans said they could use some assistance carving the anguish of mankind and offered Richard the work. He declined, telling them that he had no ability for carving.

Besides, Nicci had been eager to move on; Tanimura had only been a place to earn some money to buy provisions for the long journey ahead of them. Richard was glad to be away from the depressing sight of the carving going on.

Along the way southeast to Altur’Rang, in the cities they passed through, Richard saw many carvings on buildings, and many more freestanding in public squares, or in front of entrances. They depicted horrors: people being whipped by a grinning Keeper of the underworld; people stabbing out their own eyes; suffering people twisted, deformed, and crippled; people like packs of dogs, running on all fours, attacking women and children; people reduced to walking skeletons or covered in sores; woeful people throwing themselves into graves. In most such scenes the pitiful people were watched over by the Light of the all-perfect Creator represented by the flame.

The Old World was a celebration of misery.

Along the way south, they had stopped in a number of cities when Richard could find menial work temporary enough not to require waiting on lists. He and Nicci went for stretches eating cabbage soup that was mostly water. Sometimes they had rice or lentils or buckwheat mush, and, on occasion, the luxury of salt pork. Sometimes, Richard was able to catch fish, birds, or the odd hare. Living off the land in the Old World, though, was difficult. A lot of other people had the same idea. They both had gotten thinner on their long march. Richard began to understand the carvings of the skeletal people.

Nicci had set their destination, but dictated little else, leaving most decisions to him, complying without complaint. Week in and week out, they walked, occasionally paying a few copper pennies to ride in wagons headed their way. They crossed rivers straddled by cities large enough to have numbers of stone bridges, and went through town after town. There were vast fields of wheat, millet, sunflower, and any number of other crops, though much of the land lay fallow. They saw flocks of sheep and herds of cattle.

Farmers sold the travelers goat cheese and milk. Ever since the gift had awakened in him, Richard was able to eat meat only when not doing any fighting. He thought it might be part of the requirement to balance his need to sometimes take life. Since he wasn’t doing any fighting, he could eat meat without it making him sick. Unfortunately, they could rarely afford meat. Cheese, which he had once loved, he could hardly stomach since his gift had come to life in him. Unfortunately, it was often eat cheese, or starve.

But it was the size of the Old World, and in particular its population, that most unsettled him. Richard had naively thought that the New and the Old Worlds must be somewhat alike. They were not. The New World was but a flea on the back of the Old.

From time to time on their journey south, vast columns of men at arms moved past them on their way north to the Midlands. Several times, it had taken days for all the soldiers to march past. Whenever he saw the rank upon rank of troops, he felt a wave of relief that Kahlan was trapped in their mountain home. He would hate to think of her fighting in an army facing as many men as he saw going to the war.

By spring, when she could finally get out of the mountain home, and all those Imperial Order troops could truly begin their siege of the New World, whatever resistance the D’Haran Empire put up would be crushed. Richard hoped General Reibisch chose not to go up against the Order. He hated to think of all those brave men being slaughtered under the weight of the coming onslaught.

At one small city, Nicci had gone to a stream to wash their clothes while Richard worked the day mucking out stalls at a large stable. A number of officials had come to town and there were more horses than the stablemaster could handle. Richard had been at the right place at the right time to get the job. Not long after the officials arrived and took all the rooms at the inns, a large unit of the Imperial Order troops marched in behind them and set up camp at the city limits.

Fortunately, Nicci was on the other side of the city doing their washing. Unfortunately, a squad of men passing through the city, and doing some drinking, decided to accept volunteers. Richard kept his head down as he carried water to the horses, but the sergeant saw him. At the wrong place at the wrong time, Richard was “volunteered” into the Imperial Order. The new volunteers were quartered in the center of the immense encampment.

That night, after it was dark and most of the men were asleep, Richard unvolunteered himself. It took him until three hours before sunrise to extract himself from his service to the Imperial Order. Nicci had gone to the stable and found out what had happened to him. Richard found her at their camp, pacing in the darkness. They quickly collected their things and marched south for the rest of the night. They went cross country, since the moon was out, rather than on the roads, in case a patrol came looking for him. From then on, whenever Richard saw soldiers he did his best to become invisible.

In general, though, it wasn’t a serious concern. Hordes of youths, lusting after the promise of plunder, were only too eager to join the army.

They often had to wait weeks or months to be accepted into training, so many were the numbers joining. Richard had seen crowds of them in the cities, playing games, gambling, drinking, fighting—young men dreaming of the glory of killing the evil foes of the great empire of the Order. They enjoyed the adoration of the populace when they joined the army to go off and fight the frightful wickedness and sin that was said to infect the New World.

Richard was horrified to see the numbers of people living in the Old World, because it meant that the Order’s army already in the New World was hardly a drain on the populace—and only the beginning. He had thought that perhaps the Order might lose their enthusiasm for a war conducted so far from their homeland, or that the people of the Old World would tire of the hardship necessary to conduct such a war. He now knew that thought had been but a feeble daydream.

It didn’t take a wizard, or a prophet, to know that the armies the New World could raise, even given wildly optimistic conditions, had no hope whatsoever of prevailing against the millions upon millions of soldiers Richard had seen pouring north, to say nothing of the ones he hadn’t seen who would be taking other routes. The Midlands was doomed.

Ever since the people of Anderith chose the Order over freedom, he had known in his heart that the New World was going to fall to the Order. He felt no satisfaction in realizing how right he had been. Seeing the size of the enemy, he realized that freedom was lost, and resisting the Order was but suicide.

The course of events seemed irrevocable, the world lost to the Order.

The future for him and Kahlan seemed no less hopeless.

By far the strangest place he and Nicci had visited in their journey southeast, a place she never spoke of afterward, had been less than a week south of Tanimura. Richard had still been in a dismal mood thinking about the carvings he had seen, when Nicci took an old, seldom-used track off the main road. It led back toward the hills, to a rather small city beside a quiet river.

Most of the businesses had been abandoned. The wind, at will, carried dust through the broken windows of warehouses. Many of the homes had fallen to ruin, their roofs caved in, weeds and vines doing their best to bring down crooked walls. Only the homes on the outskirts were still occupied, mostly by people raising animals and farming the surrounding land.

On the northern side of the city, one small store remained to sell staples to surrounding farmers. There was also a leather shop, a fortune-teller, and a lonely inn. In the center of town stood the bones of buildings, long since picked clean by scavengers. Several of the buildings still stood, but most had long ago collapsed. Richard and Nicci walked through the center of town watched only by a fitful wind.

At the southern edge, they arrived at the remains of what had once been a large brick building. Without a word, Nicci turned off the road and marched deliberately into the forlorn site. The wood beams and roof had been consumed by fire. A thick mat of weeds and brush were devouring the wood floor. The brick walls were all that was left, really, and they were mostly fallen to rubble, with only a portion of the east wall still tall enough to contain a lone window frame.

The wind ruffled Nicci’s sunlit hair as she looked down the length of the skeletal remains of the building. Her arms languid at her sides, her back not quite as straight as it usually was, she stood vulnerable where once a roof would have sheltered her.

For nearly an hour, she was lost among the ghosts.

Richard stood off to the side, leaning a hip against the charred remains of part of a workbench, one of the only things left inside the brick frame.

“Do you know this place?” he finally asked her.

She blinked at his question. She stared into his eyes for a long time, as if he, too, were a ghost. She stepped close to him then, her blue eyes finally looking away to let her fingers reminisce as they glided lightly over the remains of the workbench.

“I grew up in this town,” she answered in a distant voice.

“Oh.” Richard gestured around them. “And this place?”

“They made armor here,” she whispered.

He couldn’t imagine why she would want to see such a place. “Armor?”

“The best armor in all the land. Double-proofed standard. Kings and noblemen came here to buy armor.”

Richard gazed around at the ruins of the place, wondering what more there must be to the story.

“Did you know the man who made the armor?”

Her blue eyes seeing ghosts again, she shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, but I never knew him.”

A tear ran down her cheek to drip off her smooth jaw. She seemed very much a child at that moment, alone in the world, and frightened.

Had he not known what he knew about her, Richard would have put his arms around this forlorn frail child and comforted her.