Naked Empire

Chapter 52

One of the men came forward and angrily seized a fistful of Richard’s shirt, trying to push him out. “You are the cause of this! You are an outsider! A savage! One of the unenlightened! You have brought profane ideas among our people!” He did his best to shake Richard. “You have seduced our people to violence!”

Richard snatched the speaker’s wrist and wrenched his arm around, talcing him to his knees. The man cried out in pain. Without letting up, Richard leaned down toward him.

“We have risked our lives helping your people. Your people are not enlightened, but people the same as anyone else. You are going to listen to us. This night, the future of you and your people will be shaped.”

Richard released the man with a shove, then went to the door and stuck his head out. “Cara, go ask Tom to help you get all the rest of the men to come down here. I think they had better all be part of this.”

As Cara ran to spread the word that Richard wanted all the men to gather into the basement of the “palace,” he ordered the speakers back against the wall.

“You have no right to do this,” one protested.

“You are the representatives of the people of Bandakar. You are their leaders,” Richard told them. “The time has come for you to lead.”

Behind, men started filing into the candlelit room. It wasn’t long before they were all quietly assembled. The basement was large enough that Owen’s men took up only part of the available space. Kahlan saw other, unfamiliar people straggle in as well. Knowing the nature of these people, and since Cara was letting them in, Kahlan didn’t think that they presented a threat.

Richard gestured toward the quiet gathering watching the speakers.

“These men from the town of Witherton have faced the truth of what is happening to their people. They will no longer tolerate such brutality. They will no longer be victims. They wish to be free.”

One of the speakers, a man with a narrow, pointed chin, huffed dismissively. “Freedom can never work. It only gives people license to be self-centered. A thoughtful person, dedicated to the welfare of an enlightened mankind, must reject the immoral concept of ‘freedom’ for what it is—selfish.”

“That’s right,” another agreed. “Such simplistic beliefs can only provoke a cycle of violence. This silly notion of ‘freedom’ leads to viewing things as black or white. Such uninspired morals are obsolete. Individuals have no right to judge others—especially in such authoritarian terms. What is needed is compromise among all sides if there is to be peace.”

“Compromise?” Richard asked. “A cycle of violence can only exist if you grant all people, including those who are evil, moral equivalence—if you say that everyone, including those who decide to harm others, has an equal right to exist. That is what you do when you refuse to crush evil—you give moral standing and power to those who murder.

“Devotion to compromise in such arenas is a sick idea that says you must cut off a finger, and then a leg, and then an arm to feed the monster living among you. Evil feeds on the good. If you kill the monster, the violence ends.

“You have two choices before you. Choose to live in cringing fear, on your knees, apologizing endlessly for wishing to be allowed to live as you struggle to appease an ever-expanding evil, or eliminate those who would harm you and free yourselves to live your own lives—which means you must remain vigilant, ever ready to protect yourself.”

One of the speakers, his eyes going wide, lifted an arm to point at Richard. “I know you, now. You are the one who was named in Prophecy. You are the one that Prophecy says will destroy us!”

Whispers carried the accusation back through the crowd.

Richard gazed back at his gathered men, then directed a withering glare at the speakers. “I am Richard Rahl. You’re right; I am the one named in the Prophecy given to your people so long ago. ‘Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you.’

“You’re right; this Prophecy is about me. But if I had not come along, it would eventually have been another who would have fulfilled those words, whether in another year, or another thousand years, because these words are really about man’s honorable commitment to life.

“Your people were banished because they refused to see the truth of the world around them. They chose to close their minds to reality. I have ended that blindness.”

Richard pointed back at the men with him. “When the truth was put before these men, they chose at last to open their eyes and see it. Now, the rest of your people must meet the same challenge and make a choice as to how they will live their future.

“ ‘Your destroyer will come and he will redeem you’ are words of the potential for a better future. They mean that your way of life, of impeding people from being their best, of restricting them from being all that they can be, of your blind destructive ways that crush the spirit of each individual and over time have caused so many of the best of your people to abandon you and go into the unknown beyond the boundary . . . is ended.

“The men of the Order may have invaded your land, but, spiritually, they change nothing for you. Their violence is merely more apparent than your slow suffocation of human potential. They offer the same unseeing lives you already live, simply with a more manifest form of brutality.

“I have brought the light of truth to some of your people, and in so doing I have destroyed their dark existence. The rest of your people must now decide if they will continue to cower in darkness or come into the light I have brought among you.

“In bringing that light to your people, I have redeemed them.

“I have shown them that they can soar on their own wings, aspire to reach for what they want for themselves. I have helped them take back their own lives.

“Yes, I have destroyed the pretext that is the chains of their repression, but in so doing I have freed the nobility of their spirits.

“That is the meaning of the Prophecy. It is up to each of you to rise to the occasion and seek to triumph, or to hide in your self-imposed darkness without trying. There is no guarantee that if you try you will succeed. But without trying, you will assure failure and lives of dread for yourselves and your children. The only difference will be that if you choose to live the same as you do now, if you continue to appease evil, you will now know that it’s at the price of your soul.”

Richard turned away from the speakers. Before he closed his eyes to rub them with his fingertips, Kahlan saw the terrible agony in those eyes. She wanted nothing more than to get to the last antidote and then to do what they must to rid him of the pain caused by his gift. She knew she was slowly losing him. It seemed to her as if Richard were somewhere all alone, dangling from the edge of a cliff, holding on by his fingertips, and his fingers were slowly slipping.

Owen stepped forward. “Honored speakers, the time has come to hear from the Wise One. If you do not think this crisis for our people warrants it, then nothing does. This is our future, our lives, that are at stake.

“Bring out the Wise One. We will hear his words, if he truly is wise and worthy of our loyalty.”

After noting the murmurs of agreement throughout the room, the speakers put their heads together, whispering among themselves to find a consensus that would tell them what to do. Finally, about half of them went off into a back room.

One of the remaining speakers bowed his bald head. “We will see what the Wise One has to say.” Kahlan had seen such contemptuous smiles often enough. Lifting his pointed chin, he serenely clasped his hands before himself. “Before all these people, we will put your blasphemous words to the Wise One and hear his wisdom so that this matter may be put to rest.”

Men emerged from the back room carrying posts draped with red cloth, notched boards, and planks. Before the door into a back room, they began assembling a simple platform with posts at each corner and the heavy red drapes designed to enclose it. When the structure was finally completed, they placed a large pillow on the platform and then drew the drapes together. Other men carried over two tables, holding a number of candles, and placed one on each side of the draped ceremonial seat of wisdom. In short order, the speakers had created a simple but reverent setting.

Kahlan knew a number of peoples in the Midlands who had magic and functioned in the capacity she imagined that this Wise One did. They also usually had attendants, such as these speakers. She also knew better than to underestimate such simple shamans and their link to the spirit world. There were those who had very real connections and very real power over their people.

What she couldn’t imagine was how a people without any magic whatsoever could have such an agent of the spirits. If it was true that they did, and such a person went against them, then all their work would have been for nothing.

The speakers lined up to either side and then drew the curtains in the front just enough to see into the dim interior.

There, sitting cross-legged on the pillow, was what appeared to be a boy in white robes, his hands resting prayerfully in his lap. He didn’t look very old, maybe eight or ten at most. A black scarf was tied around his head to cover his eyes.

“He’s just a boy,” Richard said.

At the interruption, one of the speakers shot Richard a murderous glare. “Only a child is innocent enough of the contamination of life to be free to touch true wisdom. As we grow older we layer our experiences over our once perfect insight, but we remember those once unadulterated connections and so we realize how only in a child can wisdom itself be so pure.”

Heads throughout the room bobbed knowingly.

Richard cast a sidelong glance at Kahlan.

One of the speakers knelt before the platform and bowed his bald head. “Wise One, we must ask your knowing guidance. Some of our wish to begin a war.”

“War solves nothing,” the Wise One said in a pious voice.

“Perhaps you would like to hear his reasons.”

“There are no valid reasons for fighting. War is never a solution. War is an admission of failure.”

The people in the room shrank back, looking ill at ease to have brought such crude inquiries before the Wise One, inquiries he had no trouble untangling with simple wisdom that laid bare obvious immorality.

“Very wise. You have shown us wisdom in its true, simple perfection. All men would do well to heed such truth.” The man bowed his head again. “We have tried to tell—”

“Why are you wearing a blindfold?” Richard asked, cutting off the speaker kneeling before the platform.

“I hear anger in your voice,” the Wise One said. “Nothing can be accomplished until you shed your hate. If you search with your heart, you can find the good in everyone.”

Richard put a hand on Owen’s back, urging him ahead. He reached back into the crowd of men and grabbed a pinch of Anson’s shirt, pulling him forward as well. The three men moved up to the Wise One’s platform. Only Richard stood tall. With his foot, he forced the kneeling speaker aside.

“I asked why you’re wearing a blindfold,” Richard said.

“Knowledge must be denied so as to make room for faith. It is only through faith that real truth can be reached,” the Wise One said. “You must believe before you can see.”

“If you believe, without seeing the truth of what is,” Richard said, “then you’re simply being willfully blind, not wise. You must see, first, in order to learn and understand.”

The men around Kahlan looked uncomfortable that Richard was speaking in this way to their Wise One.

“Stop the hate, or you reap only hate.”

“We were talking about knowledge. I haven’t asked you about hate.”

The Wise One put his hands together prayerfully before himself, bowing his head slightly. “Wisdom is all around us, but our eyes blind us, our hearing deafens us, our minds think and so make us ignorant. Our senses only trick us; the world can tell us nothing of the nature of reality. To be at one with the greater essence of the true meaning of life, you must first stare blindly inward to discover truth.”

Richard folded his arms over his chest. “I have eyes, so I can’t see. I have ears, so I can’t hear. I have a mind, so I can’t know anything.”

“The first step to wisdom is to accept that we are inadequate to know the nature of reality, and so nothing we think we know can be real.”

“We must eat to live. How is one to track a deer in the woods so you can eat? Blindfold yourself? Stuff wax in your ears? Do it while you’re asleep so your mind won’t contribute any thinking to the task at hand?”

“We do not eat meat. It is wrong to harm animals just so that we might eat. We have no more right to live than an animal.”

“So you eat only plants, eggs, cheese—things like that.”

“Of course.”

“How do you make cheese?”

In the awkward silence, someone in the back of the room coughed.

“I am the Wise One. I have not been called upon to do this work. Others make cheese for us to eat.”

“I see; you don’t know how to make cheese for your dinner because no one has ever taught you. That’s perfect. Here you are, then, blindfolded and with a clear mind not all clogged up with troublesome knowledge on the subject. So, how do you make cheese? Is it coming to you? Is the method of making cheese being sent to you through your blindfolded divine introspection?”

“Reality cannot be tested—”

“Tell me how, if you were to wear a blindfold so you couldn’t see, put wax in your ears so you couldn’t hear, and put on heavy mittens so you couldn’t feel anything, how you would even do something as simple as picking a radish to eat. Tell you what, you can leave the wax out of your ears, and not bother with the mittens. Just leave that blindfold on and show me how you can pick a radish so you have something to eat. I’ll even help you find the door, first; then you’re on your own. Come on, then. Off you go.”

The Wise One licked his lips. “Well, I . . .”

“If you deny yourself sight, hearing, touch . . . how will you plant food to sustain your life, or how can you even hunt for berries and nuts? If nothing is real, then how long until you starve to death while you wait for some inner voice of ‘truth’ to feed you?”

One of the speakers rushed forward, trying to push Richard back.

Richard shoved the man so hard that it sat him on the ground. The speakers cowered back a few paces. Richard put one boot up on the platform, laid his arm across his knee, and leaned close to the Wise One.

“Answer my questions, ‘Wise One.’ Tell me what staring blindly inwardly has so far revealed to you about making cheese. Come on; let’s hear it.”

“But . . . it’s not a fair question.”

“Oh? A question regarding the pursuit of a value is not fair? Life requires all living things to successfully pursue values if they are to continue to live. A bird dies if it can’t succeed at catching a worm. It’s basic. People are no different.”

“Stop the hate.”

“You already have on a blindfold. Why don’t you plug your ears and hum a tune to yourself so you won’t be thinking about anything”—Richard leaned in and lowered his voice dangerously—“and in your state of infinite wisdom, Wise One, just try to guess what I’m about to do to you.”

The boy squealed in fright and scooted back.

Kahlan pushed her way between Richard and Anson and sat back on the platform. She put an arm around the terrified boy and pulled him close to comfort him. He pressed himself into her sheltering protection.

“Richard, you’re scaring the poor boy. Look at him. He’s shaking like a leaf.”

Richard pulled the blindfold off the boy’s head. In confused dismay, he peered fearfully up at Richard.

“Why did you go to her?” Richard asked in a gentle tone.

“Because, you were about to hurt me.”

“You mean, then, that you were hoping she would protect you?”

“Of course—you’re bigger than me.”

Richard smiled. “Do you see what you’re saying? You were frightened and you hoped to be protected from danger. That wasn’t wrong of you, was it? To want to be safe? To fear aggression? To seek help from someone you thought might be big enough to stop the threat?”

The boy looked confused. “No, I guess not.”

“And what if I held a knife to you? Wouldn’t you want to have someone prevent me from cutting you? Wouldn’t you want to live?”

The boy nodded. “Yes.”

“That’s the value we’re talking about, here.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Life,” Richard said. “You want to live. That is noble. You don’t want someone else to take your life. That is just.

“All creatures want to live. A rabbit will run if threatened; that’s why he has strong legs. He doesn’t need the strong legs or big ears to find and eat tender shoots. He has the big ears to listen for threats, and the strong legs to escape.

“A buck will snort in warning if threatened. A snake may shake a rattle to ward off threats. A wolf growls a warning. But if the danger keeps coming and they can’t escape, a buck may trample it, the snake may strike, and the wolf may attack. None of them will go looking for a fight, but they will protect themselves.

“Man is the only creature who willingly submits to the fangs of a predator. Only man, through continual indoctrination such as you’ve been given, will reject the values that sustain life. Yet, you instinctively did the right thing in going to my wife.”

“I did?”

“Yes. Your ways couldn’t protect you, so you acted on the chance that she might. If I really were someone intent on harming you, she would have fought to stop me.”

He looked up into Kahlan’s smile. “You would?”

“Yes, I would. I, too, believe in the nobility of life.”

He stared in wonder.

Kahlan slowly shook her head. “But your instinctive act of seeking protection would have done you no good had you instead sought the protection of people who live by the misguided teachings you repeat. Those teachings condemn self-preservation as a form of hate. Your people are being slaughtered with the aid of their own beliefs.”

He looked stricken. “But, I don’t want that.”

Kahlan smiled. “Neither do we. That’s why we came, and why Richard had to show you that you can know the truth of reality and doing so will help you survive.”

“Thank you,” he said to Richard.

Richard smiled and gently smoothed down the boy’s blond hair. “Sorry I had to frighten you to show you that what you were saying didn’t really make any sense. I needed to show you that the words you’ve been taught can’t serve you well—you can’t live by them because they are devoid of reality and reason. You look to me like a boy who cares about living. I was like that when I was your age, and I still am. Life is wonderful; take delight in it, look around with the eyes you have, and see it in all its glory.”

“No one has ever talked to me about life in this way. I don’t get to see much. I have to stay inside all the time.”

“Tell you what, maybe, before I go, I can take you for a walk in the woods and show you some of the wonders of the world around you—the trees and plants, birds, maybe we’ll even see a fox—and we’ll talk some more about the wonders and joy of life. Would you like that?”

The boy’s face lit up with a grin. “Really? You would do that for me?”

Richard smiled one of those smiles that so melted Kahlan’s heart. He playfully pinched the boy’s nose. “Sure.”

Owen came forward and ran his fingers affectionately through the boy’s hair. “I was once like you—a Wise One—until I got a little older than you.”

The boy frowned up at him. “Really?”

Owen nodded. “I used to think that I had been chosen because I was special and somehow only I was able to commune with some glorious otherworldly dominion. I believed that I was gushing great wisdom. Looking back, I am ashamed to see how foolish it all was. I was made to listen to lessons. I was never allowed to be a boy. The great speakers praised me for repeating back the things I had heard, and when I spoke then with great scorn to people, they told me how wise I was.”

“Me, too,” the boy said.

Richard turned back to the men. “This is what your people have been reduced to as a source of wisdom—listening to children repeating meaningless expressions. You have minds in order to think and understand the world around you. This self-imposed blindness is a dark treason to yourselves.”

The men in front, that Kahlan could see from where she sat holding the boy, all hung their heads in shame.

“Lord Rahl is right,” Anson said, turning back to the men. “Until today, I never actually questioned it or thought about how foolish it really is.”

One of the speakers shook his fist. “It is not foolish!”

Another, the one with the pointed chin, leaned in and snatched Anson’s knife from the sheath at his belt.

Kahlan could hardly believe what she had just seen. It felt as if she were watching a nightmare suddenly unfold, a nightmare she wasn’t able to stop or even slow. It seemed she knew what was going to happen before she saw it.

With an enraged cry, the speaker suddenly struck out, stabbing Anson before he could react. Kahlan heard the blade hit bone. Driven by blind rage, the speaker swiftly drew back the fist holding the now bloody knife to stab Anson again. Anson’s face twisted in shock as he began going down.

Points of candlelight reflecting off the polished length of razor-sharp steel blurred into streaks as Richard’s sword flashed past Kahlan. Even as the sword swept around, the unique ring of steel as it had been drawn accompanied its terrifying arc toward the threat. Driven by Richard’s formidable strength, the tip of the sword whistled through the air. As the speaker’s arm reached the apex of its swing, as it once more began a deadly journey down, Richard’s blade slammed into the side of the speaker’s neck and without seeming to slow in the least ripped through flesh and bone, cleaving off the man’s head and one shoulder along with the arm holding high the knife. The lightning slash threw long strings of blood against the stone wall of the foundation of the palace of the Bandakar Empire.

As the speaker’s head and the one shoulder with the arm attached tumbled through the air in an odd, wobbling spiral, his body collapsed in a heap. The head smacked the floor with a sickening thud and bounced across the carpets, leaving a trail of blood as it tumbled.

Richard swept the crimson blade around, directing it toward the potential threat of the other speakers. Kahlan pressed the boy’s face to her shoulder, covering his eyes.

Some of the men fell in around Anson. Kahlan didn’t know how badly he was hurt—or if he was even still alive.

Not far away, the gory head and arm of the dead speaker lay before a table set with candles. The fist still held the knife in a death grip. The sudden carnage lying there before them all, the blood spreading across the floor, was horrifying. Everyone stared in stunned silence.

“The first blood drawn by you great speakers,” Richard said in a quiet voice to the cluster of cringing speakers, “is not against those who come to murder your people, but against a man who committed no violence against you—one of your own who simply stood up and told you that he wanted to be free of the oppression of terror, free to think for himself.”

Kahlan stood, and saw then that there were far more people in the room than there had been before. Most were not their men. When Cara made her way through the silent throng to Kahlan’s side, Kahlan took her by the arm and leaned close.

“Who are all those people?”

“The people from the city. Runners brought them the news that the town of Witherton had been freed. They heard about our men being here to see the Wise One and wanted to witness what would happen. The stairs and halls upstairs are full of them. The words that have been spoken down here have spread up through the whole crowd.”

Cara was obviously concerned about being close enough to protect Richard and Kahlan. Kahlan knew that many of the people had been swayed by what Richard had been saying, but now she didn’t know what they would do.

The speakers seemed to have lost their conviction. They didn’t want to be associated with the one among them who had done such a thing. One of them finally left his fellow speakers and made the lone walk over to the boy standing beside the curtain-draped platform, and under Kahlan’s protective arm.

“I am sorry,” he said in a sincere voice to the boy. He turned to the people watching. “I am sorry. I don’t want to be a speaker any longer. Prophecy has been fulfilled; our redemption is at hand. I think we would do best to listen to what these men have to say. I think I would like to live without the fear that the men of the Order are going to murder us all.”

There were no cheers, no wild ovation, but, rather, silent agreement as all the people Kahlan could see nodded with what looked like expectant hope that their secret wish to be free of the brutality of the Imperial Order was not a sinful, secret thought after all, but was really the right thing.

Richard knelt beside Owen as other men worked at tying a strip of cloth around Anson’s upper arm. He was sitting up. His whole arm was soaked in blood, but it looked like the bandage was slowing the bleeding. Kahlan sighed in relief at seeing that Anson was alive and not seriously hurt.

“It looks like it will need to be stitched,” Richard said.

Some of the men agreed. An older man pushed his way through the crowd and stepped forward.

“I do such things. I also have herbs with which to make a poultice.”

“Thank you,” Anson said as his friends helped him stand. He looked light-headed and the men had to steady him. Once sure of his feet, he turned to Richard.

“Thank you, Lord Rahl, for answering the call in the words of the devotion I spoke: ‘Master Rahl, protect us.’

“I never thought I would be the first to bleed for what we have set out to do, or that the blood would be drawn by one of our own people.”

Richard gently clapped Anson on the back of his good shoulder, showing his appreciation for Anson’s words.

Owen looked around at the crowd. “I think we have all decided to be free again.” When the crowd nodded their agreement, Owen turned to Richard.

“How will we get rid of the soldiers in Northwick?”

Richard wiped his sword clean on the cloth of the dead speaker’s trouser leg. His gaze turned up to the crowd. “Any idea how many soldiers there are here in Northwick?”

There was no anger in his voice. Kahlan had seen, since the moment he had drawn his sword, that his eyes had been absent of the Sword of Truth’s attendant magic. There was no spark of the sword’s rage in the Seeker’s eyes, no magic dangerously dancing there, no fury in his demeanor. He had simply done what was necessary to stop the threat. While it was a relief that he had swiftly succeeded, it was gravely worrisome that the sword’s magic had not come out along with the sword itself.

What had always been there to help him before had apparently finally failed him. That absence of his sword’s magic left Kahlan feeling icy apprehension.

People in the crowd looked around at others and then spoke of hundreds of men of the Order they had seen. Another man said there were several thousand.

An older woman lifted her hand. “Not that many, but approaching it.”

Owen turned to Richard. “That’s a lot of men for us to take on.”

Having never been in a real battle, he didn’t know the half of it.

Richard didn’t seem to hear Owen. He slid his sword back into the scabbard hidden under his black cloak.

“How do you know?” he asked the woman.

“I am one of the people who help prepare their meals.”

“You mean you people cook for the soldiers?”

“Yes,” the old woman said. “They do not wish to do it for themselves.”

“When do you next have to cook?”

“We have large kettles we are just starting to get ready for tomorrow’s meal. It takes us all night to prepare the stew so that we can cook it tomorrow for their evening meal. Besides that, we also have to work all night making biscuits, eggs, and porridge for their morning meal.”

Kahlan imagined that the soldiers were probably pleased to have such a ready supply of pliant slaves. Richard paced in a short track between her and Owen. He pinched his lower lip as he considered the problem. With such a small force of their own, nearly two thousand armed men was a lot to take on, especially considering how inexperienced the men were. Kahlan recognized that Richard was scheming something.

He took the arm of the older man tightening the bandage around Anson’s wound. “You said you had herbs. Do you know about such things?”

The man shrugged. “Not a great deal, just enough to make simple remedies.”

Kahlan’s mood sank. She had thought that maybe this man might know something about making more of the antidote.

“Do you have access to lily of the valley, oleander, yew, monkshood, hemlock?”

The man blinked in surprise. “Common enough, I guess, especially just to the north in the wooded areas.”

Richard turned to his men standing at the fore of the crowd. “We must eliminate the men of the Order. The less fighting we have to do, the better.

“While it’s still dark, we need to slip out of the city and go collect the things we need.” He lifted a hand to the woman who had spoken about cooking for the soldiers. “You show us where you’re going to do all the cooking of tomorrow’s evening meal. We’ll bring you some extra ingredients.

“With what we put in the stew, the soldiers will be getting violently sick within hours. We will put different things in different kettles, so the symptoms will be different, to help create confusion and panic. If we can get enough of the poisons into the stew, most of them will die within hours, suffering everything from weakness and paralysis to convulsions.

“Late in the night, we’ll go in and finish any who aren’t yet dead, or who may not have eaten. If we prepare carefully, Northwick will be free of the Imperial Order without having to fight them. It will be swiftly ended without any of us being hurt.”

The room was silent for a moment; then Kahlan saw smiles breaking out among the people. A ray of light had come into their lives.

With the heady thought of imminent freedom, some began to weep as they suddenly felt the need to come forward and tell brief accounts of those they loved who had been raped, tortured, taken away, or murdered.

Now that these people had been given a chance to live, none wanted to turn back. They saw salvation, and were willing to do what had to be done to gain it.

“This will destroy our way of life,” someone said, not in bitterness, but in wonder.

“Redemption is at hand,” one of the other people in the crowd added.