Naked Empire

Chapter 44

The men milled around the top of the pass, some staring off into their own thoughts, some gazing up at the statue of Kaja-Rang, the man who had banished their people. Some of the men snatched glimpses at their companions. Richard could see that they were aching to ask friends what they would do, but they kept to Richard’s orders and didn’t speak.

Finally, when Richard stepped up before them, one of the younger men came forward. He had been one of the men eager to hear Richard’s words. He’d looked as if he had listened carefully and considered the things Richard had told them. Richard knew that if this man said no, then there was no chance that any of the others would agree.

When the young, blond-headed man opened his fist, two pebbles lay in his palm. Richard let out an inner sigh that at least one of the men had actually chosen to do the right thing.

Another man came forward and opened his fist, showing two pebbles sitting in his palm. Richard nodded in acknowledgment, without showing any reaction, and let him move aside. The rest of the men had lined up. Each stepped forward in turn and silently opened his hand. Each showed him two pebbles, showing that he would recant their death threat, and then moved off so that the next man could show his choice.

Owen was the last in line. He looked up at Richard, pressed his lips tight, and then thrust out his hand. “You have done us no harm,” he said as he opened his fist. There in his palm lay two pebbles.

“I don’t know what will happen to us, now,” Owen said, “but I can see that we must not cause you harm because we are desperate for your help.”

Richard nodded. “Thank you.” The sincerity in his voice brought smiles to many of the faces watching. “You have all showed two pebbles. I’m encouraged that you’ve all chosen to do the right thing. We now have common ground upon which to find a future course.”

The men looked around one another in surprise. They each cheerfully gathered in close to their friends, talking excitedly to one another about how they had all made the same decision. They looked gleeful that they were united in their decision. Richard moved back to where Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, and Tom stood.

“Satisfied?” he asked Kahlan and Cara.

Cara folded her arms. “What would you have done had they all chosen to keep the antidote’s location a secret until after you helped them?”

Richard shrugged. “I’d be no better off than I was, but no worse off, either. I’d have to help them, but at least I would know that I dare not trust any of them.”

Kahlan still didn’t look pleased. “And what if most of them would have said yes, but some stuck to their ways and said no?”

Richard looked into her resolute green eyes. “Then, after the ones who agreed had told me where to find the antidote, I would have had to kill those who said no.”

Understanding the seriousness of his explanation, Kahlan nodded. Cara smiled her satisfaction. Jennsen looked shocked.

“If any would have said no,” he explained to Jennsen, “then they would have been choosing to continue to enslave me, to hold a sentence of death over my head in order to manipulate my life to get what they wanted from me. I would never be able to trust them in what I must ask the rest of them to do. I couldn’t trust our lives to such treachery. But, now, that’s one less problem we have to worry about.”

Richard turned to the waiting men. “Each of you has decided to return my life to me.”

The faces watching him turned serious as they waited to hear what he would do now. Richard gazed down at the small figure of himself, at the sand trickling down, at the eerie black surface that had already descended over the top of the statue, like the underworld itself slowly claiming his life.

His fingers left smears of blood across the surface of the figure.

The clouds had lowered in around them, thickening so that the afternoon light seemed more like the gloom of dusk.

Richard lowered the statue and looked back up at the men. “We will do our best to see if we can help you get rid of the Order.”

A cheer rose into the thin, cold air. The men hooted their excitement as well as their relief. He hadn’t yet seen any of them smile quite this broadly before. Those smiles, more than anything, revealed the depth of their wish to be free of the men of the Order. Richard wondered how they would feel about it when he finally told them their part.

He knew that as long as Nicholas the Slide was able to seek them out through the eyes of the races, he would remain a threat that would haunt them wherever they went and endangered all of their work to get the Old World to rise up and overthrow the Imperial Order. More than that, though, Nicholas would be able to direct killers to find them. The thought of Nicholas seeing Kahlan and knowing where to find her gave Richard chills. He had to eliminate Nicholas. It was possible that in doing so, in eliminating their leader, he would also help these people drive the Order from their homes.

Richard gestured for the men to gather in closer. “First, before we get to the matter of freeing your people, you need to show me where you’ve hidden the poison.”

Owen squatted down and selected a stone from nearby. With it, he scratched a chalky oval on the face of a flat spot in the rock. “Say that this line is the mountains surrounding Bandakar.” He set the stone at the end of the oval closest to Richard. “Then this is the pass into our land, where we are now.”

He plucked three pebbles from the ground. “This is our town, Witherton, where we lived,” he said as he set the first pebble down not far from the rock that represented the pass. “There is antidote there.”

“And this is where all of you men were hiding?” Richard asked as he circled a finger over the first pebble. “In the hills surrounding Witherton?”

“Mostly to the south,” Owen said, pointing to the area. He placed the second pebble near the middle of the oval. “Here there is another vial of antidote, in this city, here, called Hawton.” He placed the third pebble near the edge of the oval. “Here is the third vial, in this city, Northwick.”

“So then,” Richard summed up, “I just need to go to one of those three places and recover the antidote. Since your town is the smallest, that would probably be our best chance.”

Some of the men shook their heads; others looked away.

Owen, looking troubled, touched each of the three pebbles. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl, but one of these is not enough. Too much time has passed. Even two will be insufficient by now. The man who made the poison said that if too much time passed, all four would be necessary to insure a remedy.

“He said that if you did not immediately take the first antidote I brought, then it would only halt the poison for a while. He said that then the other three vials would all be needed. He said that in this case, the poison would possibly go through three states. If you are to be free of the poison, you must drink all of the three remaining antidotes. If you don’t, you will die.”

“Three states? What does that mean?”

“The first state will be pain in your chest. The second state will be dizziness that makes standing difficult.” Owen looked away from Richard’s gaze. “In the third state the poison makes you blind.” He looked up and touched a hand to Richard’s arm, as if to dispel his worry. “But taking three vials of the antidote will cure you, make you well.”

Richard wiped a weary hand across his brow. The pain in his chest told him that he was in the poison’s first state.

“How much time do I have?”

Owen looked down as he straightened his sleeve. “I’m not sure, Lord Rahl. We have already taken a lot of time traveling this far since you had that first vial. I think we have no time to lose.”

“How much time?” Richard asked in as calm a voice as he could manage.

Owen swallowed. “To be truthful, Lord Rahl, I’m surprised that you are able to stand the pain from the first state of the poison. From what I was told, the pain would grow as time passed.”

Richard simply nodded. He didn’t look up at Kahlan.

With soldiers of the Imperial Order occupying Bandakar, getting in to recover the antidote from one place sounded difficult enough, but retrieving it from all three places sounded beyond difficult.

“Well, since time is short, I have a better idea,” Richard said. “Make me more of the antidote. Then we won’t have to worry about getting what you’ve hidden and we can simply worry about how best to take on the men of the Order.”

Owen shrugged one shoulder. “We can’t.”

“Why not?” Richard leaned in. “You made it before—you made the antidote that you hid. Make it again.”

Owen shrank back. “We can’t.”

Richard took a patient breath. “Why not?”

Owen pointed off at the small bag he’d brought, now lying to the side—the bag containing the fingers of three girls. “The father of those girls was the man who made the poison and made the antidote. He is the only one among us who knew how to make such complex things with herbs. We don’t know how—we don’t even know many of the ingredients he used.

“There may be others in the cities who could make an antidote, but we don’t know who they are, or if they are still alive. With men of the Order in those places we wouldn’t even be able to find these people. Even if we could, we don’t know what was used to make up the poison, so they would not know how to make an antidote. The only chance you have to live is to recover the three vials of antidote.”

Richard’s head was hurting so much that he didn’t know if he could stand much longer. With only three vials in existence, and all three needed if he was to live, he had to get to them before anything happened to any one of them. Someone could find one and throw it out. They could be moved. They could be broken, the antidote draining away into the ground. With every breath, he felt stitches of pain pull inside his chest. Panic gnawed at the edges of his thoughts.

When Kahlan rested her hand on his shoulder, Richard laid a grateful hand over hers.

“We will help you get the antidote, Lord Rahl,” one of the men said.

Another nodded. “That’s right. We will help you get it.”

The men all spoke up, then, saying that they would all help to get the antidote so that Richard could rid himself of the poison.

“Most of us have been to at least two of these places,” Owen said.

“Some of us have been to all three. I hid the antidote, but I told the others the places, so we all know where it is. We know where we have to get in to recover it. We will tell you, too.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Richard squatted down as he studied the stone map. “Where is Nicholas?”

Owen leaned in and tapped the pebble in the center. “Here, in Hawton, is this man Nicholas.”

Richard looked up at Owen. “Don’t tell me. You hid the antidote in the building where you saw Nicholas.”

Owen shrugged self-consciously. “At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Now, I wish I had thought better of it.”

Standing behind Richard, Cara rolled her eyes in disgust. “I’m surprised you didn’t hand it to Nicholas and ask him to hold on to it for you.”

Appearing eager to change the subject, Owen pointed at the pebble representing Northwick. “In this city is where the Wise One is hiding. Maybe we can get help from the great speakers. Maybe the Wise One will give us his blessing and then people will help us in our effort to rid our land of the Imperial Order.”

After all he’d learned about the people who lived beyond the boundary in Bandakar, Richard didn’t think he could count on any meaningful help from them; they wanted to be free of marauding brutes, but condemned their only real means to be free. These men had at least proven a degree of resolve.

These men would have to work to change other people’s attitudes, but Richard had his doubts that they would garner much immediate help.

“In order to accomplish what you men rightfully want—to eradicate the Order, or at least make them leave your homes—you are going to have to help. Kahlan, Cara, Jennsen, Tom, and I aren’t going to be able to do it alone. If it’s to work, you men must help us.”

“What is it you wish us to do?” Owen asked. “We already said we will take you to these places where the antidote is hidden. What more can we do?”

“You are going to have to help us kill the men of the Order.”

Instantly, heated protests erupted. All of the men talked at once, shaking his head, warding the notion with his hands. Although Richard couldn’t make out all their words, their feelings about what he said were obvious enough. What words he did hear were all objections that they couldn’t kill.

Richard rose up. “You know what these men have done,” he said in a powerful voice that brought them to silence. “You ran away so you wouldn’t also be killed. You know how your people are being treated. You know what’s being done to your loved ones in captivity.”

“But we can’t harm another,” Owen whined. “We can’t.”

“It’s not our way,” another man added.

“You banished criminals through the boundary,” Richard said. “How did you make them go through if they refused?”

“If we had to,” one of the older men said, “a number of us would hold him, so that he could harm no one. We would tie his hands and bear him to the boundary. We would tell such a banished man that he must go out of our land. If he still refused, we would carry him to a long steep place in the rock where we would lay him down and push him feet first so that he would slide down the rock and go beyond. Once we did this, they weren’t able to return.”

Richard wondered at the lengths these people went to not to harm the worst animals among them. He wondered how many had to suffer or die at the hands of such criminals before the people of Bandakar were sufficiently motivated to take what were to them extreme measures.

“We understand much of what you have told us,” Owen said, “but we cannot do what you ask. We would be doing wrong. We have been raised not to harm another.”

Richard snatched up the bag with the girls’ fingers and shook it at the men. “Every one of your loved ones back there is thinking of nothing but being saved. Can any of you even imagine their terror? I know what it’s like to be tortured, to feel helpless and alone, to feel like you will never escape. In such a situation you want nothing more than for it to stop. You would do anything for it to stop.”

“That’s why we needed you,” an older man said. “You must do this. You must rid us of the Order.”

“I told you, I can’t do it alone.” With an arm wrapped in a bloody bandage, Richard gestured emphatically. “Surrendering your will to men of the Order who would do such things as this solves nothing. It simply adds more victims. The men of the Order are evil; you must fight back.”

“But if only you would talk to those men like you talked to us, they would see their misguided ways. They would change, then.”

“No, they won’t. Life doesn’t matter to them. They’ve made their choice to torture, rape, and kill. Our only chance to survive, our only chance to have a future is to destroy them.”

“We can’t harm another person,” one of the men said.

“It’s wrong to harm another,” Owen agreed.

“It’s always immoral to hurt, much less kill, another person,” a middle-aged man said to the mumbled agreement of his fellows. “Those who do wrong are obviously in pain and need our understanding, not our hate. Hate will only invite hate. Violence will only begin a cycle of violence that never solves anything.”

Richard felt as if the ground he had gained with these men was slipping away from him. He was about to run his fingers back through his hair when he saw that they were covered in blood. He dropped his arm and shifted his approach.

“You poisoned me to get me to kill these men. By that act, you’ve already proven that you accept the reality that it’s sometimes necessary to kill in order to save innocent lives—that’s why you wanted me. You can’t hold a belief that it’s wrong to harm another and at the same time coerce me to do it for you. That’s simply killing by proxy.”

“We need our freedom,” one of them said. “We thought that maybe because of your command as a ruler you could convince these men, for fear of you, to leave us be.”

“That’s why you have to help me. You just said it—for fear of me. You must help me in this so that the threat, the fear, is credible. If they don’t believe the threat is real then why would they leave your land?”

One of the others folded his arms. “We thought you might rid us of the Order without violence, without killing, but it is up to you to do such killing if that is your way. We cannot kill. From our very beginning, our ancestors have taught us that killing is wrong. You must do this.”

Another, nodding his agreement, said, “It’s your duty to help those who cannot bring themselves to do what you can do.”

Duty. The polite name put to the chains of servitude.

Richard turned away, closing his eyes as he squeezed his temples between fingers and thumb. He’d thought that he was beginning to get through to these men. He’d thought he would be able to get them to think for themselves—in their own best interest—rather than to function spontaneously according to the rote dictates of their indoctrination.

He could hardly believe that after all he’d told them, these men would still rather have their loved ones endure torture and brutal murder than harm the men committing the crimes. By refusing to face the nature of reality, these men were willingly giving the good over to evil, life over to death.

He realized then that it was even more basic than that. In the most fundamental sense, they were willfully choosing to reject the reality of evil.

Deep inside him, every breath pulled a stitch of pain. He had to get the antidote. He was running out of time.

But that alone would not solve his problems; his gift was killing him just as surely as the poison. He felt so sick from the pounding pain of his headache that he thought he might throw up. Even the magic of his sword was failing him.

Richard feared the poison, but in a more central way, he feared the encroaching death from within, from his gift. The poison, as dangerous as it was, had a clearly defined cause and cure. With his gift, he felt lost.

Richard looked back into Kahlan’s troubled eyes. He could see that she had no solution to offer. She stood in a weary pose, her arm hanging straight with the weight of the warning beacon that seemed to tell him only that he was dying, but offered no answers. Its whole reason for being was to call him to a proclaimed duty to help replace the boundary, as if his life was not his own, but belonged to anyone who laid claim to it by shackling him with a declaration of duty.

That concept—duty—was no less a poison than that which these men had given him . . . a call to sacrifice himself.

Richard took the small statue from Kahlan’s hand and stared down at it.

The inky black had already enveloped half the length of the figure. His life was being consumed. The sand continued to trickle away. His time was running out.

The stone figure of Kaja-Rang, the long-dead wizard who had summoned him with the warning beacon and charged him with an impossible task, loomed over him as if in silent rebuke.

Behind him, the men huddled close, affirming to one another their beliefs, their ways, their responsibility to their ancient ideals, that the men of the Order were acting as they were because they were misguided and could still be reformed. They spoke of the Wise One and all the great speakers who had committed them to the path of peace and nonviolence. They all reaffirmed the belief that they must follow the path that had been laid down for them from the very beginning by their land’s founders, their ancestors, who had given them their customs, their beliefs, their values, their way of living.

Trying to elevate these men to understand what was right and necessary seemed as difficult as trying to lift them by a slender thread. That thread had broken.

Richard felt trapped by the deluded convictions of these people, by their poison, by the headaches, by Nicholas hunting them, and by a long-dead wizard who had reached out from the underworld to try to enslave him to a long-dead duty.

Anger welling up inside him, Richard cocked his arm and heaved the warning beacon at the statue of Kaja-Rang.

The men ducked as the small figure shot by just over their heads to shatter against the stone base of the statue. Amber fragments and inky black shards flew in every direction. The sand from inside splattered in a stain across the front of the granite pedestal.

The cowering men fell silent. Overhead, wisps trailing from the sullen clouds drifted by, almost close enough to reach up and touch. A few icy flakes of snow floated along in the still air. All around, a frigid fog had moved in to envelop the surrounding mountains, leaving the top of the pass with the stone sentinel seeming isolated and otherworldly, as if this were all there was to existence. Richard stood in the dead quiet at the center of everyone’s attention.

The words written in High D’Haran on the statue’s base echoed through Richard’s mind.

Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond . . . for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.

The High D’Haran words streamed again and again through his mind. The translation of those words just didn’t feel right.

“Dear spirits,” Richard whispered in sudden realization. “I had it wrong. That’s not what it says.”