Faith of the Fallen (Sword of Truth 6)

“Sure. What?”

“Will you wait up here, in case Richard comes here, or even the blacksmith? If the blacksmith comes to his shop, he might know something.”

Kamil stretched his neck and gazed down at the palace. “Well, all right. If Richard does come here, I wouldn’t want him to miss you. What shall I tell him, if I see him?”

Kahlan smiled. That I love him, she thought, but said instead, “Tell him I’m here, with Cara, and we’ve gone down there looking for him. If he does show up, I don’t want to miss him. Have him wait here—we’ll come back.”

Kahlan thought they could make it down to the plaza to have a look, but everyone else seemed to have the same idea. It took forever just to make it down the hill to the grounds. The closer they got, the tighter the people were jammed together. Kahlan’s progress ground to a halt. It was a struggle just to keep contact with Cara. Everyone in the crowd seemed intent on squeezing forward toward the plaza. More people crushed in all the time.

Kahlan soon realized that she and Cara were trapped in the press of people.

The conversation on everyone’s lips was about only one thing: the statue.

It was late in the day by the time Nicci had worked herself partway toward the plaza. Every inch gained had been a struggle. She was close enough to see the people up around the statue, but she could get no closer. Try as she might, she could not make any more headway. Just like her, everyone else wanted to get closer, too. They were pressed up against her, pinning her arms. It was at times a frightening, helpless feeling. She managed to pull one arm free so she could help herself maintain her balance. It came to her that to fall in such circumstances could be fatal.

If only she had her power.

Her own arrogance had driven her to trading it away. What she had gotten in return, though, was life. But it had cost Richard and Kahlan their freedom. Nicci couldn’t simply withdraw her power from the link, in order to have use of her gift again, or Kahlan would die. Nicci didn’t want her life at the cost of another’s—that was what she had come to understand was true evil.

Nicci had searched for Richard. She hadn’t found him. She hadn’t been able to find the blacksmith, Mr. Cascella, or Ishaq, either. As soon as she could find Richard, she could tell him that she had been wrong, and then they could leave Altur’Rang. She wanted so much to see his face when she told him she was taking him back to Kahlan and that she was going to reverse the spell. Of all people, they were the last who should have to suffer for what Nicci had learned.

The only place left that she could think to look for him was at the statue. He might be there. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t get any closer. Now, she realized that she probably couldn’t even extract herself from the crush of hundreds of thousands of people around her. There had to be well over a half million people in the huge throng around the palace.

And then, Nicci saw Brother Narev and his disciples appear up on the plaza, all in their dark brown robes, Brother Narev in his creased cap, the rest with their faces hidden in deeply cowled hoods. Crowding the rear of the plaza were a few hundred officials of the Order who had traveled in to attend the palace dedication—important men, all.

If only she had her power, she could have killed them where they stood.

It was then that she caught a fleeting glimpse of Richard behind the officials, with guards surrounding him. The whole central area around the plaza was thick with the surly guards.

Brother Narev stepped out to the edge of the plaza, all angles under dark robes. Beneath his creased cap, beneath his hooded brow, his dark gaze swept the assembly. The people were in a noisy, emotional state. Brother Narev did not look pleased, but then, Brother Narev never looked pleased. Pleasure, he would say, was wicked. He raised his arms, commanding silence.

When the crowd quieted, he began in that terrible grating voice of his, a voice that had haunted her from that day in her house when she was little, that voice that she had allowed to rule her mind, that voice that, along with her mother’s, had done her thinking for her.

“Fellow citizens of the Order. We have a special event planned for you today. Today, we bring you the spectacle of temptation…and more.”

His arm glided back toward the statue. His long thin fingers opened. His voice rumbled with revulsion. “Evil, itself.”

The crowd murmured uneasily. Brother Narev smiled, the thin slash of his mouth pleating back his hollow cheeks as he grinned like death’s own skull. His eyes were as dark as his robes. The setting sun was fleeing the scene, taking clarity, leaving behind the tremors of flickering light from the dozens of torches to cast their flickering orange light across the massive columns towering behind the plaza, and the weak light of the moon to wash the faces of the grim officials. The air, so cloying with the heavy scents of the crowd, had turned chill.

“Fellow citizens of the Order,” Brother Narev said in a voice that Nicci thought might crack the stone walls, “today you will see what happens to evil, when confronted by the virtue of the Order.”

He hooked a skeletal finger, signaling behind the heads of the officials. Guards muscled Richard forward. Nicci cried out, but her voice was lost in the clamor of tens of thousands of other voices.

Brother Neal swaggered forward, then, lugging with him a sledgehammer.

Nicci checked to the sides and saw that there were several thousand armed guards at hand. More screened the plaza off from the people. Brother Narev had taken no chances. Neal, with a polite smile and a deferential bow, handed the sledgehammer to Brother Narev.

Brother Narev lifted the sledgehammer above his head as if it were a sword held high in triumph.

“Evil, wherever it is found, must be destroyed.” He aimed the weaving head of the sledgehammer toward the statue. “This is a thing of evil, created by an extremist who hates his fellow man, to victimize the weak. He contributes nothing to the advancement of his fellow man, nothing to the succor of his fellow man, nothing to the education or support of his fellow man. He offers only lewd and profane images to prey on the susceptible and feebleminded among us.”

The crowd was silent in their bewildered disappointment. From what Nicci could tell as she had walked among them throughout the day, they had come to believe that this statue was some new offering by the Order to the people—some grand thing for them to see at the emperor’s palace, some bright shining hope. They were confused and stunned by what they were hearing.

Brother Narev lifted the sledgehammer. “Before this criminal’s corpse is hung from a pole for his crimes against the Order, he is to see his vile work destroyed to the cheers of virtuous people!”

As the sun’s last ray fled below the horizon, Brother Narev lifted the heavy sledgehammer high in the flickering light of smoking torches. The sledgehammer wobbled momentarily at the apex of its arc before descending in a heavy swing. The crowd sent up a collective gasp as the steel head rang out when it struck the male statue’s leg. A few small chips fell away. It had done surprisingly little damage.

In the absolute silence, Richard laughed derisively at Brother Narev’s impotent swing.

Even from the distance, Nicci could see Brother Narev’s face turning crimson as Richard stood watching and chuckling. The crowd murmured, hardly able to believe any man would laugh at a brother of the Order—at Brother Narev himself.

Brother Narev could hardly believe it.

The dozens of guards who had their spears leveled at Richard could hardly believe it.

In the tense silence, Richard’s laugh echoed off the semicircle of stone walls and soaring columns behind them. Death’s grin returned. Brother Narev lifted the sledgehammer by the head, its weight awkward in his bony hand, and held the handle out to Richard.

“You will destroy your depraved work yourself.”

The words “or you will die on the spot” were not spoken, but everyone heard them implied.

Richard accepted the

handle of the sledgehammer. He could have looked no more noble doing so if he had been taking a jewel-encrusted sword.

Richard’s raptor gaze left Brother Narev and swept out over the crowd as he took several strides toward the steps. Brother Narev lifted a finger, signaling the guards to hold their spears. By the smirk on the faces of Brothers Narev and Neal, they didn’t think the crowd would care to hear anything a sinner had to say.

“You are ruled,” Richard said in a voice that rang out over the multitude, “by mean little men.”

The people gasped as one. To speak against a brother was treason, most likely, and heresy for sure.

“My crime?” Richard asked aloud. “I have given you something beautiful to see, daring to hold the conviction that you have a right to see it if you wish. Worse… I have said that your lives are your own to live.”

A rolling murmur swept out through the multitude. Richard’s voice rose in power, demanding in its clarity to be heard above the whispering.

“Evil is not one large entity, but a collection of countless, small depravities brought up from the muck by petty men. Living under the Order, you have traded the enrichment of vision for a gray fog of mediocrity—the fertile inspiration of striving and growth, for mindless stagnation and slow decay—the brave new ground of the attempt, for the timid quagmire of apathy.”

With gazes riveted and lips still, the crowd listened. Richard gestured out over their heads with his sledgehammer, wielded with the effortless grace of a royal sword.

“You have traded freedom not even for a bowl of soup, but worse, for the spoken empty feelings of others who say that you deserve to have a full bowl of soup provided by someone else.

“Happiness, joy, accomplishment, achievement…are not finite commodities, to be divided up. Is a child’s laughter to be divided up and allotted? No! Simply make more laughter!”