Naked Empire

Chapter 40

As the men following Tom emerged from the trees below and into the open, Richard was dismayed to see that their numbers were far less than Owen said had been hiding with him in the hills. Rubbing the furrows on his brow with his fingertips, Richard stepped back up to the short plateau where Kahlan waited.

Her own brow drew down with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I doubt they brought fifty men.”

Kahlan took up his hand again, her voice coming in gentle assurance.

“That’s fifty more than we had.”

Cara came up behind them, dropping her load off to the side. She took up station behind Richard to his left, on the opposite side from Kahlan.

Richard met her grim gaze. He wondered how the woman always managed to look as if she fully expected everything to happen just as she wished it to happen, and that was the end of it.

Tom stepped up over the edge of the rock, the men following. He was sweating from the exertion of the climb, but a tight smile warmed his face when he saw Jennsen just coming up the other side of the rise. She returned the brief smile and then stood in the shadows beside the base of the statue, back out of the way.

When the unkempt band of men caught sight of Richard in his black pants and boots, black tunic trimmed in a band of gold around the edge, the broad leather belt, the leather-padded silver wristbands with ancient symbols circling them, and the gleaming silver-and-gold-wrought scabbard, they seemed to lose their courage. When they saw Kahlan standing beside him, they cowered back toward the edge, bowing hesitantly, not knowing what they were supposed to do.

“Come on, then,” Tom told them, prompting them all to come up onto the expanse of flat rock in front of Richard and Kahlan.

Owen whispered to the men as he moved among them, urging them to come forward as Tom was gesturing. They complied timidly, shuffling in a little closer, but still leaving a wide safety margin between themselves and Richard.

As the men all gazed about, unsure as to what they were supposed to do next, Cara stepped forward and held an arm out toward Richard.

“I present Lord Rahl,” she said in a clear tone that rang out over the men gathered at the top of the pass, “the Seeker of Truth and wielder of the Sword of Truth, the bringer of death, the Master of the D’Haran Empire, and husband to the Mother Confessor herself.”

If the men had looked timid and unsure before, Cara’s introduction made them all the more so. When they looked from Richard and Kahlan back to Cara’s penetrating blue eyes, seeing her waiting, they all went to a knee in a bow before Richard.

When Cara stepped deliberately to the fore, in front of the men, turned, and went to her knees, Tom got the message and did the same. Both bent forward and touched their foreheads to the ground.

In the silent, late-morning air, the men waited, still unsure what it was they were to do.

“Master Rahl, guide us,” Cara said in a clear voice so the men could all hear her. She waited.

Tom looked back over his shoulder at all the blond-headed men watching.

When Tom frowned with displeasure, the men understood that they were expected to follow the lead. They all finally went to both knees and bowed forward, imitating Tom and Cara, until their foreheads touched the cold granite.

“Master Rahl, guide us,” Cara began again, never lifting her forehead from the ground.

This time, led by Tom, the men all repeated the words after her.

“Master Rahl, guide us,” they said with a decided lack of unity.

“Master Rahl, teach us,” Cara said when they all had finished the beginning of the oath. They followed her lead again, but still hesitantly and without much coordination.

“Master Rahl, protect us,” Cara said.

The men repeated the words, their voices coming a little more in union.

“In your light we thrive.”

The men mumbled the words after her.

“In your mercy we are sheltered.”

They repeated the line.

“In your wisdom we are humbled.”

Again they spoke the words after her.

“We live only to serve.”

When they finished repeating the words, she spoke the last line in a clear voice: “Our lives are yours.”

Cara rose up on her knees when they finished and glared back at the men all still bowed forward but peeking up at her. “Those are the words of the devotion to the Lord Rahl. You will now speak it together with me three times, as is proper in the field.”

Cara again put her forehead to the ground at Richard’s feet.

“Master Rahl, guide us. Master Rahl, teach us. Master Rahl, protect us. In your light we thrive. In your mercy we are sheltered. In your wisdom we are humbled. We live only to serve. Our lives are yours.”

Richard and Kahlan stood above the people as they spoke the second and third devotion. This was no empty show put on by Cara for the benefit of the men; this was the devotion as it had been spoken for thousands of years and Cara meant every word of it.

“You may rise now,” she told the men.

The men cautiously returned to their feet, hunched in worry, waiting silently. Richard met all their eyes before he began.

“I am Richard Rahl. I am the man you men decided to poison so as to enslave me and thus force me to do your bidding.

“What you have done is a crime. While you may believe that you can justify your action as proper, or think of it as merely a means of persuasion, nothing can give you the right to threaten or take the life of another who has done you no harm nor intended none. That, along with torture, rape, and murder, is the means by which the Imperial Order rules.”

“But we meant you no harm,” one of the men called out in horror that Richard would accuse them of such a ghastly crime. Other men spoke up in agreement that Richard had it all wrong.

“You think I am a savage,” Richard said in a tone of voice that silenced them and put them back a step. “You think yourselves better than me and so that somehow makes it all right to do this to me—and to try to do it to the Mother Confessor—because you want something and, like petulant children, you expect us to give it to you.

“The alternative you give me is death. The task you demand of me is difficult beyond your imagination, making my death from your poison a very real possibility, and likely. That is the reality of it.

“I already came close to dying from your poison. At the last possible instant I was granted a temporary stay of my execution when one of you gave me a provisional antidote. My friends and loved ones believed I would die that night. You were the cause of it. You men consciously decided to poison me, thereby accepting the fact that you might be killing me.”

“No,” a man insisted, his hands clasped in supplication, “we never intended to harm you.”

“If there was not a credible threat to my life, then why would I do as you wish? If you truly mean me no harm and are not committed to killing me if I don’t go along with you, then prove it and give me the antidote so that I can have my life back. It’s my life, not yours.”

This time no one spoke up.

“No? So you see, then, it is as I say. You men are committed to either murder or enslavement. The only choice I have in it is which of those two it will be. I will hear no more of your feelings about what you intended. Your feelings do not absolve you of your very real deeds. Your actions, not your feelings, speak the truth of your intent.”

Richard clasped his hands behind his back as he paced slowly before the men. “Now, I could do as you people are fond of doing, and tell myself that I can’t know if any of it is true. I could do as you would do, declare myself inadequate to the task of knowing what’s real and refuse to face reality.

“But I am the Seeker of Truth because I do not try to hide from reality. The choice to live demands that the truth be faced. I intend to do that. I intend to live.

“You men must today decide what you will do, what will be the future of your lives and the lives of the ones you love. You are going to have to deal with reality, the same as I must, if you are to have a chance at life. Today you will have to face a great deal of the truth, if you are to have that which you seek.”

Richard gestured to Owen. “I thought you said there were more men than this. Where are the rest?”

Owen took a step forward. “Lord Rahl, to prevent violence, they turned themselves over to the men of the Order.”

Richard stared at the man. “Owen, after all you’ve told me, after all those men have seen from the Order, how could they possibly believe such a thing?”

“But how are we to know that this time it will not stop the violence? We can’t know the nature of reality or—”

“I told you before, with me you will confine yourself to what is, and not repeat meaningless phrases you have memorized. If you have real facts I want to hear them. I’m not interested in meaningless nonsense.”

Owen pulled his small pack off his back. He fished around inside and came up with a small canvas pouch. Tears welled up in his eyes as he gazed at it.

“The men of the Order found out that there were men hiding out in the hills. One of those men hiding with us has three daughters. In order to prevent a cycle of violence, someone in our town told the men of the Order which girls were his daughters.

“Every day the men of the Order tied a rope to a finger of each one of these three girls. One man held the girl while another pulled on the rope until her finger tore off. The men of the Order told a man from our town to go to the hills and give the three fingers to our men. Every day he came.”

Owen handed the bag to Richard. “These are the fingers from each of his daughters.”

“The man who brought them to our men was in a daze. They said he no longer seemed human. He talked in a dead voice. He repeated what he had been bidden to say. He had decided that since nothing was real, he would see nothing and do as he was told.

“He said that the men of the Order told him that some of the people from our town had given the names of the men in the hills and that they had the children of those other men, as well. They said that unless the men returned and gave themselves up, they would do the same to the other children.

“A little more than half the men hiding in the hills could not stand to think of themselves being the cause of such violence, and so they went back to our town and gave themselves over to the men of the Order.”

“Why are you giving me this?” Richard asked.

“Because,” Owen said, his voice filled with tears, “I wanted you to know why our men had no choice but to turn themselves in. They could not stand to think of their loved ones suffering such terrible agony because of them.”

Richard looked out at the mournful men watching him. He felt his anger boiling up inside, but he kept it in check as he spoke.

“I can understand what those men were trying to do by giving themselves up. I can’t fault them for it. It won’t help, but I couldn’t fault them for desperately wanting to spare their loved ones from harm.”

Despite his rage, Richard spoke in a soft voice. “I’m sorry that you and your people are suffering such brutality at the hands of the Imperial Order. But understand this: it is real, and the Order is the cause of it. Those men of yours, if they did as the Order commanded or if they failed to, were not the cause of violence. The responsibility for causing violence is entirely the Order’s. You did not go out and attack them. They came to you, they attacked you, they enslave and torture and murder you.”

Most of the men stood in slumped poses, staring at the ground.

“Do any of the rest of you have children?”

A number of the men nodded or mumbled that they did.

Richard ran his hand back through his hair. “Why haven’t the rest of you turned yourselves in, then? Why are you here and not trying to stop the suffering in the same way the others did?”

The men looked at one another, some seeming confused by the question while others appearing unable to put their reasons into words. Their sorrow, their distress, even their hesitant resolve, were evident on their faces, but they could not come up with words to explain why they would not turn themselves in.

Richard held up the small canvas bag with the gruesome treasure, not allowing them to avoid the issue. “You all knew about this. Why did you not return as well?”

Finally one man spoke up. “I sneaked to the fields at sunset and talked to a man working the crops, and asked what happened to those men who had returned. He said that many of their children had already been taken away. Others had died. All the men who had come in from the hills had been taken away. None were allowed to return to their homes, to their families. What good would it do for us to go back?”

“What good, indeed,” Richard murmured. This was the first sign that they grasped the true nature of the situation.

“You have to stop the Order,” Owen said. “You must give us our freedom. Why have you made us make this journey?”

Richard’s initial spark of confidence dimmed. While they might have in part grasped the truth of their troubles, they certainly weren’t facing the nature of any real solution. They simply wanted to be saved. They still expected someone to do it for them: Richard.

The men all looked relieved that Owen had at last asked the question; they were apparently too timid to ask it themselves. As they waited, some of the men couldn’t help stealing glances at Jennsen, standing to the rear.

Most of the men also appeared troubled by the statue looming behind Richard.

They could only see the back of it and didn’t really know what it was meant to be.

“Because,” Richard finally told them, “in order for me to do as you want, it’s important that you all come to understand everything involved. You expect me to simply do this for you. I can’t. You are going to have to help me in this or you and all of your loved ones are lost. If we are to succeed, then you men must help the rest of your people come to understand the things I have to tell you.

“You have gone this far, you have suffered this much, you have made this much of a commitment. You realize that if you do the same as your friends have been trying to do, if you apply those same useless solutions, you, too, will be enslaved or murdered. You are running out of options. You all have made a decision to at least try to succeed, to try to rid yourselves of the brutes killing and enslaving your people.

“You men here are their last chance . . . their only chance.

“You must now hear the rest of what I have to tell you and then make up your minds as to what will be your future.”

The haggard, ragtag men, all dressed in worn and dirty clothes, all looking like they’d had a very difficult time of living in the hills, either spoke up or nodded that they would hear him out. Some even looked as if they might be relieved by how directly and honestly he spoke to them. A few even looked hungry for what he might say.