Naked Empire

Chapter 45

Kahlan felt as if her heart were being crushed by the ordeal these men were putting Richard through. Just when she’d thought he had gotten them to understand the truth of what was needed, it seemed to have slipped away as the men reverted to their willful blindness.

Richard, though, seemed almost to have forgotten the men. He stood staring at where the warning beacon had shattered against the statue. Kahlan stepped closer to him and whispered.

“What do you mean, you had it wrong, and that’s not what it says? What are you talking about?”

“The translation,” he said in what sounded like startled comprehension.

He stood motionless, facing the towering statue of Kaja-Rang. “Remember how I told you that it was an odd way to phrase what it said?”

Kahlan glanced to the statue and then back to Richard. “Yes.”

“It wasn’t odd at all; I just had it wrong. I was trying to make it say what I thought it would say—that those beyond couldn’t see magic—instead of just seeing what was before me. What I told you before isn’t what it says. . . .”

When his voice trailed off, Kahlan reached up and gripped his arm to draw his attention. “What do you mean, that’s not what it says?”

Richard gestured toward the statue. “I see what I did wrong with the phrasal sequence, why I was having trouble with it. I told you I wasn’t sure of the translation. I was right to have doubts. It doesn’t say, ‘Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond . . . for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.’ ”

Jennsen leaned in close beside Kahlan. “Are you sure?”

Richard looked back at the statue, his voice distant. “I am now.”

Kahlan pulled on his arm, making him look at her. “So what does it say?”

His gray eyes met her gaze briefly before turning to the eyes of the statue of Kaja-Rang staring out at the Pillars of Creation, at his final safeguard protecting the world from these people. Instead of answering her, he started away.

The men parted as Richard strode toward the statue. Kahlan stayed close on his heels, Cara following in her wake. Jennsen gathered up Betty’s rope and pulled her along. The men, already backing out of the way for Richard, kept a wary eye on the goat and her mistress as they passed. Tom stayed where he was, keeping a careful but unobtrusive watch over all the men.

At the statue, Richard swiped the dusting of snow off the ledge, revealing again the words carved in High D’Haran. Kahlan watched his eyes moving along the line of words, reading them to himself. He had a kind of excitement in his movements that told her he was racing after an important quarry.

For the moment, she could also see that his headache was gone. She couldn’t understand the way it ebbed from time to time, but she was relieved to see strength in the way he moved. Hands spread on the stone, leaning on his arms, he looked up from the words. Without the headache, there was a vibrant clarity in his gray eyes.

“Part of this story has been puzzling,” he said. “I understand now. It doesn’t say, ‘Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond . . . for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.’ ”

Jennsen’s nose wrinkled. “It doesn’t? You mean it wasn’t meant to be about these pristinely ungifted people?”

“Oh, it was about them, all right, but not in that respect.” Richard tapped a finger to the carved words. “It doesn’t say ‘for beyond is evil: those who cannot see,’ but something profoundly different. It says, ‘Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond . . . for beyond are those who cannot see evil.’ ”

Kahlan’s brow drew down. “. . . those who cannot see evil.”

Richard lifted his bandaged arm up toward the figure towering over them. “That’s what Kaja-Rang feared most—not those who couldn’t see magic, but those who could not see evil. That’s his warning to the world.” He aimed a thumb back over his shoulder, indicating the men behind them. “That’s what this is all about.”

Kahlan was taken aback, and a little perplexed. “Do you think it might be that because these people can’t see magic they also can’t recognize evil,” she asked, “or that because of the way they’re different they simply don’t have the ability to conceive of evil, in much the same way they can’t conceive of objective magic as having nothing to do with mysticism?”

“That might in part be what Kaja-Rang thought,” Richard said. “But I don’t.”

“Are you so sure?” Jennsen asked.

“Yes.”

Before Kahlan could make him explain, Richard turned to the men. “Here, in stone, Kaja-Rang left a warning for the world. Kaja-Rang’s warning is about those who cannot see evil. Your ancestors were banished from the New World because they were pristinely ungifted. But this man, this powerful wizard, Kaja-Rang, feared them for something else: their ideas. He feared them because they refused to see evil. That’s what made your ancestors so dangerous to the people of the Old World.”

“How could that be?” a man asked.

“Thrown together and banished to a strange place, the Old World, your ancestors must have clung desperately to one another. They were so afraid of rejection, of banishment, that they avoided rejecting one of their own. It developed into a strong belief that no matter what, they should try not to condemn anyone. For this reason, they rejected the concept of evil for fear they would have to judge someone. Judging someone as evil meant they would have to face the problem of removing them from their midst.

“In their flight from reality, they justified their practices by settling on the fanciful notion that nothing is real and so no one can know the nature of reality. That way, they wouldn’t have to admit that someone was evil. Better to deny the existence of evil than have to eliminate the evildoer in their midst. Better to turn a blind eye to the problem, ignore it, and hope it went away.

“If they admitted the reality of evil, then eliminating the evildoer was the only proper action, so, by extension, since they had been banished, they thought that they must have been banished because they were evil. Their solution was to simply discard the entire concept of evil. An entire belief structure developed around this core.

“Kaja-Rang may have thought that because they were pristinely ungifted and couldn’t see magic, they also couldn’t see evil, but what he feared was the infection of their beliefs spreading to others. Thinking requires effort; these people offered beliefs that needed no thought, but merely adopting some noble-sounding phrases. It was, in fact, an arrogant dismissal of the power of man’s mind—an illusion of wisdom that spurned the requirement of any authentic effort to understand the world around them or the nuisance of validation. Such simplistic solutions, such as unconditionally rejecting all violence, are especially seductive to the undeveloped minds of the young, many of whom would have eagerly adopted such disordered reasoning as a talisman of enlightenment.

“When they began fanatically espousing these empty tenets to others, it probably set off the alarm for Kaja-Rang.

“With the spread of such ideas, with the kind of rabid hold it has over some people, such as it has over you men, Kaja-Rang and his people saw how, if such beliefs ran free, it would eventually bring anarchy and ruin by sanctioning evil to stalk among their people, just as it leaves you men defenseless against the evil of the Imperial Order now come among you.

“Kaja-Rang saw such beliefs for what they were: embracing death rather than life. The regression from true enlightenment into the illusion of insight spawned disorder, becoming a threat to all of the Old World, raising the specter of a descent into darkness.”

Richard tapped his finger on the top of the ledge. “There is other writing up here, around the base, that suggests as much, and what became the eventual solution.

“Kaja-Rang had those who believed these teachings collected, not only all the pristinely ungifted banished from the New World, but also the rabid believers who had fallen under their delusional philosophy, and banished the whole lot of them.

“The first banishment, from the New World down to the Old, was unjust. The second banishment, from the Old World to the land beyond here, had been earned.”

Jennsen, twiddling the frayed end of Betty’s rope, looked dubious. “Do you really think there were others banished along with those who were pristinely ungifted? That would mean there were a great many people. How could Kaja-Rang have made all these people go along? Didn’t they resist? How did Kaja-Rang make them all go? Was it a bloody banishment?”

The men were nodding to her questions, apparently wondering the same thing.

“I don’t believe that High D’Haran was a common language among the people, not down here, anyway. I suspect that it was a dying language only used among certain learned people, such as wizards.” Richard gestured to the land beyond. “Kaja-Rang named these people Bandakar—the banished. I don’t think the people knew what it meant. Their empire was not called the Pillars of Creation, or some name referring only to the ungifted. The writing here suggests that it was because it was not only the pristinely ungifted who were banished, but all those who believed as they did. They all were Bandakar: the banished.

“They thought of themselves, of their beliefs, as enlightened. Kaja-Rang played on that, flattering them, telling them that this place had been set aside to protect them from a world not ready to accept them. He made them feel that, in many ways, they were being put here because they were better than anyone else. Not given to reasoned thinking, these people were easily beguiled in this fashion and duped into cooperating with their own banishment. According to what’s hinted at in the writing here around the statue’s base, they went happily into their promised land. Once confined to this place, marriage and subsequent generations spread the pristinely ungifted trait throughout the entire population of Bandakar.”

“And Kaja-Rang really believed they were such a terrible threat to the rest of the people of the Old World?” Jennsen asked.

Again, men nodded, apparently in satisfaction that she had asked the question. Kahlan suspected that Jennsen might have asked the question on behalf of the men.

Richard gestured up at the statue of Kaja-Rang. “Look at him. What’s he doing? He’s symbolically standing watch over the boundary he placed here. He’s guarding this pass, watching over a seal keeping back what lies beyond. In his eternal vigilance his hand holds a sword, ever at the ready, to show the magnitude of the danger.

“The people of the Old World felt such gratitude to this important man that they built this monument to honor what he had done for them in protecting them from beliefs they knew would have imperiled their society. The threat was no trifling matter.

“Kaja-Rang watches over this boundary even in death. From the world of the dead he sent me a warning that the seal had been breached.”

Richard waited in the tense silence until all the men looked back at him before he quietly concluded.

“Kaja-Rang banished your ancestors not only because they couldn’t see magic, but, more importantly, because they couldn’t see evil.”

In restless disquiet, the men glanced about at their companions. “But what you call evil is just a way of expressing an inner pain,” one of them said, more as a plea than as an argument.

“That’s right,” another told Richard. “Saying someone is evil is prejudiced thinking. It’s a way of belittling someone already in pain for some reason. Such people must be embraced and taught to shed their fears of their fellow man and then they will not strike out in violent ways.”

Richard swept his glare across all the watching faces. He pointed up at the statue.

“Kaja-Rang feared you because you are dangerous to everyone—not because you are ungifted, but because you embrace evil with your teachings. In so doing, in trying to be kind, to be unselfish, in trying to be nonjudgmental, you allow evil to become far more powerful than it otherwise would. You refuse to see evil, and so you welcome it among you. You allow it to exist. You give it power over you. You are a people who have welcomed death and refused to denounce it.

“You are an empire naked to the shadow of evil.”

After a moment of thick silence, one of the older men finally spoke up.

“This belief in evil, as you call it, is a very intolerant attitude and is far too simplistic a judgment. It’s nothing less than an unfair condemnation of your fellow man. None of us, not even you, can judge another.”

Kahlan knew that Richard had a great deal of patience, but very little tolerance. He had been very patient with these men; she could see that he had reached the end of his tolerance. She half expected him to draw his sword.

He walked among the men, his raptor glare moving individuals back as he passed. “Your people think of themselves as enlightened, as above violence. You are not enlightened; you are merely slaves awaiting a master, victims awaiting killers. They have finally come for you.”

Richard snatched up the small bag and stood before the last man who had spoken. “Open your hand.”

The man glanced to those at his sides. Finally, he held his hand out, palm up.

Richard reached into the bag and then placed a small finger, its flesh withered and stained with dried blood, in the man’s hand.

The man obviously didn’t want the little finger sitting in the palm of his hand, but after he looked up into Richard’s withering glower, he said nothing and made no attempt to rid himself of the gory trophy.

Richard walked among the men, ordering random men to open their hands.

Kahlan recognized the ones he selected as men who had objected to the things he was trying to do to help them. He placed a finger in each upturned hand until the bag was empty.

“What you hold in your hand is the result of evil,” Richard said. “You men all know the truth of it. You all knew evil was loose in your land. You all wanted that to change. You all wanted to be rid of evil. You all wanted to live. You all wanted your loved ones to live.

“You all had hoped to do it without having to face the truth.

“I have tried to explain things to you so that you could understand the true nature of the battle we all face.”

Richard straightened the baldric over his shoulder.

“I am done explaining.

“You wanted me brought to your land. You have accomplished your goal. Now, you are going to decide if you will follow through with what you know to be right.”

Richard again stood before them, his back straight, his chin held high, his scabbard gleaming in the gloomy light, his black tunic trimmed in gold standing out in sharp contrast against the fog-shrouded mountains behind him. He looked like nothing so much as the Lord Rahl. He was as commanding a figure as Kahlan had ever seen.

After Richard and Kahlan’s beginning so long ago, when they had struck out from those secluded woods of his, Richard had turned the world upside down. From the beginning, he had always been at the heart of their struggle, and was now the ruler of an empire—even if that endangered empire was largely a mystery to him, as was his gift.

His cause, though, was crystal clear.

Together, Kahlan and Richard were at the center of the storm of a war that had engulfed their world. It had now engulfed these men and their land.

Many people saw Richard as their only salvation. Richard seemed forever trying to prove them wrong. For many others, though, he was the single most hated man alive. For them, Richard sought to give them cause; he told people that their life was their own. The Imperial Order wanted him dead for that more than for any blow he had dealt them.

“This is the way things are going to be,” Richard finally said in a voice of quiet authority.

“You will surrender your land and your loyalty to the D’Haran Empire, or you will be the subjects of the Imperial Order. Those are your only two choices. There are no others. Like it or not, you must choose. If you refuse to make a choice, events will decide for you and you will likely end up in the hands of the Imperial Order. Make no mistake, they are evil hands.

“With the Order, if you are not murdered, you will be slaves and treated as such. I think you know very well what that entails. Your lives will have no value to them except as slaves, called upon to help them spread their evil.

“As part of the D’Haran Empire, your lives will be your own. I will expect you to rise up and live them as the individuals you are, not as some speck of dirt in a pit of filth you have dug yourselves into.

“The seal to your hiding place, to the Bandakaran Empire, has failed. I don’t know how to repair it, nor would I if I could. There is no more Empire of Bandakar.

“There is no way to allow you to be who you were and to protect you. Maybe the Order can be thrown out of your land, but they cannot be effortlessly kept out, for it is their ideas that have come to destroy you.

“So choose. Slaves or free men. Life as either will not be easy. I think you know what life as slaves will be like. As free men you will have to struggle, work, and think, but you will have the rewards that brings, and those rewards will be yours and no one else’s.

“Freedom must be won, but then it has to be guarded lest those like the Order come again to enslave those wishing for someone else to do their thinking.

“I am the Lord Rahl. I intend to go get the antidote to the poison you’ve given me. If you men choose to be part of this struggle, to rid yourselves and your loved ones of evil, then I will help you.

“If you choose not to stand with us, then you may go back and let the Order do with you what they will, or you can run. If you run, you may survive for a time, as you have been doing, but, because that is not the way you wish to live, you will die as frightened animals, never having lived what life has to offer.

“So choose, but if you choose to stand with me against evil, then you will have to relinquish your self-imposed blindness and open your eyes to look around at life. You will have to see the reality of the world around you. There is good and bad in the world. You will have to use your minds to judge which is which so that you can seek the good and reject the bad.

“If you choose to stand with me, I will do my best to answer any honest question and try to teach you how to triumph against the men of the Order and those like them. But I will not suffer your mindless teachings that are nothing more than a calculated rejection of life.

“Take a look at the bloody fingers you or your friends hold. Look at what was done to children by evil men. You should hate such men who would do this. If you don’t, or can’t, then you have no business being with those of us who embrace life.

“I want each of you to think about those children, about their terror, their pain, their wish not to be hurt. Think of what it was like for them to be alone and in the hands of evil men. You should rightfully hate the men who would do such things. Hold tight to that righteous hatred, for that is the hatred of evil.

“I intend to recover the antidote so that I can live. In the process, I also intend to kill as many of those evil men as I can. If I go alone, I may succeed in getting the antidote, but alone I will not succeed in liberating your homes from the Imperial Order.

“If you choose to go with me, to help me in this struggle, we may have a chance.

“I don’t know what I face there, so I can’t honestly tell you that we have a good chance. I can only tell you that if you don’t help me, then there is likely no chance.”

Richard held up a finger. “Make no mistake. If you choose to join us and we take up this struggle, some of us will probably die. If we do not, all of us will die, not necessarily in body, but in spirit. Under such rule as the Order has shown you, no one lives, even though their bodies might for a time endure the misery of life as slaves. Under the Order, every soul withers and dies.”

The men were silent as Richard paused to meet their gazes. Most could not look away, while some seemed shamed and so they stared at the ground.

“If you choose to side with me in this struggle,” Richard said with deliberate care, “you will be called upon to kill men of the Order, evil men. If you once thought that I enjoyed killing, let me assure you that you are very wrong. I hate it. I do it to defend life. I would never expect you to relish killing. It is a necessity to do it, not to enjoy doing it. I expect you to relish life and do what is necessary to preserve it.”

Richard picked up one of the items, lying off to the side, that they had made while waiting for Tom and Owen to bring the men up into the pass.

It looked like little more than a stout stick. It was in fact made of oak limbs. It was rounded at the back to fit the hand, narrow at a point in the middle, and pointed at the other end.

“You men don’t have weapons. While we waited for you to arrive, we’ve made some.” He waggled his fingers, requesting Tom to come forward. “The men of the Order won’t recognize these as weapons, at first, anyway. If questioned, you should tell them that they’re used to make holes in the ground to plant crops.”

With his left hand, Richard seized Tom’s shirt at his shoulder, to hold him, and demonstrated the weapon’s use by slowly showing how it would be thrust upward, toward a man’s middle just under his ribs, to stab him. Some faces among the men twisted with revulsion.

“This can most easily be driven up into a man’s soft part, up in under his ribs,” Richard told them. “Once you thrust it in, give it a quick sideways twist to break it off at the narrow point. That way, the man won’t be able to pull it out. With such a thing lodged in his insides, if he can even stand, he won’t want to be running after you or trying to wrestle you. You’ll be better able to get away.”

One of the men lifted a hand. “But a piece of wood like that will be wet and wouldn’t break. Many of the wood fibers will just bend over, leaving the handle end attached.”

Richard tossed the weapon to the man. After he caught it, he said, “Look at the middle, where it’s cut to a narrow neck. You’ll see that it’s been held over a fire and dried for that very reason. Notice the pointed end, too. You’ll see that it’s been cut and split into four sections, with the points bent open, like a flower bud, so that as it’s thrust into an enemy it has a good chance to break open, the four sides going in different directions to do more damage. With that one thrust, it will be like stabbing him four times.

“When you snap it off in him, he won’t be able to fight you because every move he makes will wrench those long oak splinters through his vulnerable insides. If it doesn’t hit something vital and kill him immediately, he’s certainly likely to die within the day. While he’s dying, he’ll be screaming in agony and fear. I want such evil men to know that the pain and death they inflict on others will be coming for them. That fear will cause them to begin to think of running. It will make them lose sleep, wear them down, so that when we do get to them they’ll be easier to kill.”

Richard picked up another item. “This is a small crossbow.” He held it high for the men to see as he pointed outi ts features. “As you can see, the bowstring is locked back on this nut. A stout bolt is laid in this groove, here. Pulling this lever rotates the nut, releasing the string and firing the bolt. It isn’t fancy, and you men aren’t experienced at using such weapons, but at close, range you don’t have to be all that good a shot.

“I’ve started a number of crossbows and have a whole pile of stocks and parts made. With the items that you men brought back, we can finish making them. They’re rather crude, and, as I said, they won’t be good at much of a distance, but they are small and you can hide them under a cloak. No matter how big and strong the enemy is, the smallest of you can kill him. Not even his chain-mail armor will protect against such a weapon fired at close range. I cah promise you that they will be very deadly.”

Richard showed the men hardwood clubs they would stud with nails. Such weapons could also be concealed. He showed them a simple cord with a small wooden handle at each end that was used to strangle a man from behind when stealth was paramount.

“As we take these men, we’ll be able to get other weapons—knives, axes, maces, swords.”

“But, Lord Rahl,” Owen said, looking beside himself with worry, “even if we were to agree to join you in this, we are not fighters. These men of the Order are brutes who are experienced at such things. We would stand no chance against them.”

The others voiced their worried agreement. Richard shook his head as he held up his hands for them to be quiet.

“Look at those fingers you hold. Ask yourselves what chance those little girls had against such men. Ask yourselves what chance your mothers, your sisters, your wives, your daughters have. You are the only hope for these people. You are the only hope for yourselves.

“Most likely, you men would not stand a chance against such men, either. But I have no intention of fighting them as you’re thinking. That’s a good way to get killed.” Richard pointed at one of the younger men. “What is it we want? The reason you came to get me?”

The man looked confused. “To get rid of the men of the Order?”

“Yes,” Richard said. “That’s right. You want to be rid of murderers. The last thing you want is to fight them.”

The man gestured at the weapons Richard had shown them. “But these things . . .”

“These men are murderers. Our task is to execute them. We want to avoid fights. If we fight them, we risk being hurt or killed. I am not saying that we won’t have to fight them, but that isn’t our goal. There will be times when there may be limited numbers of them and we can be sure that with surprise we can take them out before a fight has a chance to erupt. Keep in mind that these men have been conditioned to none of your people putting up any resistance. We hope to kill them before it occurs to them to draw a weapon.

“But if we don’t have to face them, all the better. Our goal is to kill them. To kill every one of them we can. Kill them when they sleep, when they are looking the other way, when they are eating, when they are talking, when they are drinking, when they are out for a stroll.

“They are evil. We must kill them, not fight them.”

Owen threw up his hands. “But, Lord Rahl, if we were to start killing them, they would take revenge on all the people they have.”

Richard watched the men, waiting until he was sure everyone was paying attention.

“You have just recognized the reality that they are evil. You’re right; they will probably start killing captives as a way to convince you to surrender. But they are killing them now. Over time, if left to do as they will, the killing they do will be on a vast scale. The faster we kill them, the sooner it’s over and the sooner the murder will stop. Some people will lose their lives because of what we do, but in doing it, we will free all the rest. If we do nothing, then we condemn those innocent people to the mercy of evil and evil grants no mercy. As I’ve said before, you can’t negotiate with evil. You must destroy it.”

A man cleared his throat. “Lord Rahl, some of our people have sided with the men of the Order—believed their words. They will not want us to harm the men of the Order.”

Richard let out a heavy breath. He turned away for a moment, gazing off into the gloom, before turning his attention once more to the men. “I’ve had to kill people I knew my whole life because they sided with the Order, much the same as you are saying. They came to believe the men of the Imperial Order, and because I was opposed to the Order, they tried to kill me. It’s a terrible thing to have to kill someone like that, someone you know. I believe the alternative is worse.”

“The alternative?” the man asked.

“Yes, letting them murder me. That’s the alternative: losing your life and losing the cause for which you fight—the lives of your loved ones.”

Richard’s expression had turned grave. “If some of your people have joined with the Order, or work to protect them, then it may be that you could end up facing them. It will be their life, or yours. It could even mean the lives of the rest of us. If they side with evil, then we must not allow them to stop us from eliminating evil.

“This is part of what you must weigh in your decision to join us or not. If you take up this struggle, you must accept that you may have to kill people you know. You must weigh this in the choice you will make.”

The men no longer seemed shocked by his words. They looked solemn as they listened.

Kahlan saw small birds flitting past, looking to roost for the night.

The sky, the icy fog, was getting darker. She scanned the sky, ever watchful for black-tipped races. With the weather in the pass so dreadful, she doubted they would be around. The fog, at least, was comforting for that reason.

Richard looked exhausted. She knew how hard it was for her to breathe in the high, thin air, so it had to be far worse for him; she feared how, because of the poison, the thin air robbed Richard of his strength. They needed to be down out of the high pass.

“I have told you the truth and all I can for now,” Richard told the men. “Your future is now up to each of you.”

He quietly asked Cara, Jennsen, and Tom to collect their things. He put a gentle hand on Kahlan’s back as he turned to the men and gestured down the hill.

“We’re going back down to our camp in those woods. You men decide what you will do. If you are with us, then come down there in the protection of the trees, where the races won’t be able to spot us when the weather lifts. We will need to finish making the weapons you will carry.

“If any of you choose not to join us, then you’re on your own. I plan not to be here, at this camp, for long. If the Order captures you they will likely torture you and I don’t want to be anywhere nearby when you scream your lungs out as you reveal where our camp was.”

The forlorn men stood huddled in a group.

“Lord Rahl,” Owen asked, “you mean we must choose now?”

“I’ve told you all I can. How much longer can those being tortured, raped, and murdered wait for you? If you wish to join us and be part of life, then come down to our camp. If you choose not to be on our side, then I wish you luck. But please don’t try to follow us or I’ll have to kill you. I was once a woods guide; I will know if any of you follow us.”

One of the men, the one who had been the first to show Richard two pebbles to say that he would reveal the location of the antidote, stepped forward, away from the rest of the men.

“Lord Rahl, my name is Anson.” Tears filled his blue eyes. “I wanted you to know that, to know who I am. I am Anson.”

Richard nodded. “All right, Anson.”

“Thank you for opening my eyes. I’ve always had some of the thoughts that you explained. Now I understand why, and I understand the darkness kept over my eyes. I don’t want to live like that anymore. I don’t want to live by words that don’t mean anything and I don’t want the men of the Order to control my life.

“My parents were murdered. I saw my father’s body hanging from a pole. He never hurt anyone. He did nothing to deserve such a murder. My sister was taken. I know what those men are doing to her. I can’t sleep at night thinking about it, thinking about her terror.

“I want to fight back. I want to kill these evil men. They’ve earned death. I want to grind them into dust, as you have said.

“I choose to join with you and fight to gain my freedom. I want to live free. I want those I love to live free.”

Kahlan was stunned to hear one of them say such things, especially without first consulting with the rest of the men. She had watched the eyes of the other men as Anson spoke. They all listened keenly to everything Anson said.

Richard smiled as he placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

“Welcome to D’Hara, Anson. Welcome home. We can use your help.” He pointed off at Cara and Tom picking up the weapons they’d brought to show the men.

“Why don’t you help them take those things back down to our camp.”

Anson grinned his agreement. The soft-spoken young man had broad shoulders and a thickly muscled neck. He was genial, but looked determined.

If she were in the Imperial Order, Kahlan would not want to see such a powerfully built man coming after her.

Anson eagerly tried to take the load from Cara’s arms. She wouldn’t relinquish it, so he picked up the rest of the things and followed Tom down the hill. Jennsen went along, too, pulling Betty behind by her rope, tugging for the first few steps because Betty wanted them to stay with Richard and Kahlan.

The other men watched as Anson started down the hill with Cara, Tom, and Jennsen. They then moved off to the side, away from the statue, while they whispered among themselves, deciding what they would do.

Richard glanced at the figure of Kaja-Rang before starting down the hill. Something seemed to catch his eye.

“What’s the matter?” Kahlan asked.

Richard pointed. “That writing. On the face of the pedestal, below his feet.”

Kahlan knew there had been no writing in that spot before, and she was still too far away to really tell if she could see writing in the flecked granite. She glanced back to see the others making their way down the hill, but instead followed Richard when he started toward the statue. The men were still off to the side, busily engaged in their discussion.

She could see the spot on the face of the pedestal where the warning beacon had shattered. The sand from inside the statue representing Richard was still splattered across the face of the pedestal.

As they got closer, she could hardly believe what she was beginning to see. It looked as if the sand had eroded the stone to reveal lettering. The words had not been there before; that much she was sure of.

Kahlan knew a number of languages, but she didn’t know this one. She recognized it, though. It was High D’Haran.

She hugged her arms to herself in the chill wind that had come up. The somber clouds stirred restlessly. She peered around at the imposing mountains, many hidden by a dark shroud of fog. Swirling curtains of snow obscured other slopes in the distance. Through a small, brief opening in the wretched weather, the valley she could see off through the pass offered the promise of green and warmth.

And the Imperial Order.

Kahlan, close beside Richard, wished he would put a warm arm around her. She watched as he stared at the faint letters in the stone. He was being far too quiet for her peace of mind.

“Richard,” she whispered, leaning close to him, “what does it say?”

Transfixed, he ran his fingers slowly, lightly over the letters, his lips soundlessly pronouncing the High D’Haran words.

“Wizard’s Eighth Rule,” Richard whispered in translation. “Taiga Vassternich.”