The last of it was not a question, but a statement, and one Jennsen could not argue.
“Maybe,” Sebastian added, “the Creator was working through Darken Rahl to lift the taint of magic from Althea—to mercifully free her from it.”
Jennsen rested her chin on her knees as she watched the meat sizzling. Althea said that she was left with only the gift of prophecy, complaining that it was torturous to her.
Jennsen’s mother had taught her to draw a Grace and told her that the gift was given by the Creator. In the proper hands, a Grace was magic. Even though Jennsen had no magic, that magical symbol had on several occasions protected her. While she knew that people could do evil, Jennsen didn’t like the idea of thinking that the gift was evil. Even though she couldn’t do magic, she knew that it could be a wondrous thing.
She gently sought to try a different approach. “You said that Emperor Jagang has sorceresses with him, the Sisters of the Light, who might be able to help me. They use magic. If magic is evil—”
“They use magic in our cause, so that magic might one day be eliminated from the world.”
“How can that make sense? If you truly believe magic to be evil, then how could you think to ally yourselves with what you profess to be evil?”
Sebastian checked the salt pork when she held one of the sticks out to him, then pulled a piece off on the point of his knife. He held up the knife and waggled it for her to see.
“People kill other people with knives and swords. If we wanted to eliminate knives and swords so that the killing would stop, we could hardly do so with words alone. We would have to take away people’s knives and swords by force in order to stop the madness of violence for the good of everyone. People cling to evil. We would have to use knives and swords in that fight to rid the world of those evil things. Then the world would be at peace. Without the means of murder, people’s passions would cool and the Keeper would flee their hearts.”
Jennsen carved off a chunk of sizzling meat and blew on it to cool it a little. “And so you use magic in that way?”
“That’s right.” Sebastian chewed, giving a moan of approval to the taste before he swallowed and went on. “We want to eliminate the evil of magic, but to do so we have to use magic in the fight, or else evil would win.”
Jennsen took a juicy bite of the pork, moaning her agreement with his opinion of the taste. It was wonderful having something hot to eat.
“And do Brother Narev and the Emperor Jagang think that knives and swords are evil, too?”
“Of course, because their sole purpose is to maim and kill—naturally we don’t mean tools like bread knives, but weapons, certainly, are evil things. People will eventually be free of their scourge, though, and then the plague of murder and death will be a thing of the past.”
“You mean to say that even soldiers won’t have weapons?”
“No, soldiers will always have to be armed in order to defend a free and peaceful people.”
“But, then how can people protect themselves?”
“From what? Only the soldiers will carry deadly weapons.”
Jennsen tilted her head toward him in admonition. “Were it not for the knife I carry, soldiers would have easily murdered me along with my mother.”
“Evil soldiers. Our soldiers fight only for good, for the defense and security of the people, not to enslave them. When we defeat the D’Haran forces, then there will be peace.”
“But even then—”
He leaned toward her. “Don’t you see? Eventually, with magic eliminated, weapons will no longer be needed. It’s the corrupt passions of people which are made lethal because they have access to weapons that result in crimes and murders.”
“Soldiers have passions.”
He dismissed the thought with a wave of a hand. “Not if they’re trained properly and are under supervision of good officers.”
Jennsen gazed off at the sparkling dome of stars. The world he envisioned certainly sounded inviting. But if what he claimed were true, then magic, as they used it, was being used for a good end, so that would mean it could be neither good nor bad, but that, much like her knife, the intent of the person wielding magic actually carried the moral condition, not the magic itself. Rather than say so, she asked another question.
“What would a world without magic be like?”
Sebastian smiled wistfully. “Everyone would be equal. No one would have an unfair advantage.” He stabbed another piece of meat and pulled it off the stick on the point of his knife. “Everyone would work together, then, because we would all be the same. No one would have the unfair use of magic and be able to take advantage of others. You, for example, would be free to live your life without Lord Rahl hunting you with his magic.”
Althea said that Richard Rahl had been born with powers of the gift not seen in thousands of years. He had, after all, gotten closer to her than Darken Rahl ever had. He had sent those men who had murdered her mother. But Althea had also said that Jennsen was a hole in the world to those with the gift; Lord Rahl could hunt her, but not with magic.
“You will never be free,” Sebastian finally added in a quiet voice, “until you eliminate Richard Rahl.”
Her eyes turned toward him. “Why me? With all those fighting against him, why do you say until I eliminate him?”
But even as she was asking the question, she began to see the terrible answer.
“Well,” he said, leaning back. “I guess what I really meant to say was that you won’t be free until Lord Rahl is eliminated.”
He turned away and pulled a waterskin closer. She watched him take a long drink, then changed the subject.
“Captain Lerner said that Lord Rahl was married.”
“To a Confessor,” Sebastian confirmed. “If Richard Rahl was looking to find a wife who was his match in evil, he found her.”
“You know about her, then?”
“Only the little I’ve heard from the emperor. I can tell you what I know, if you want.”
Jennsen nodded. With a finger and thumb, she pulled some more salt pork off one of the long sticks, eating while she watched the firelight dance in his eyes as he spoke.
“The barrier between the Old World to the south and the New World to the north stood for thousands of years—until Lord Rahl destroyed it so that he might conquer our people. Probably not long before your mother would have been born, I think, the New World was itself divided up into three lands. To the far west was Westland. D’Hara is to the east. After killing his father and seizing rule, Richard Rahl destroyed these boundaries separating the three lands of the New World.
“Between Westland and D’Hara is the Midlands, an evil place where magic is said to hold sway and where the Confessors live. The Midlands is ruled by the Mother Confessor herself. Emperor Jagang told me that, while she is young, maybe my age, she is as smart as she is deadly.”
Jennsen was given pause by his chilling words. “Do you know what a Confessor is? What ‘Confessor’ means?”
Holding the waterskin, Sebastian draped a forearm over his bent knee. “I don’t know, except that she’s gifted with frightening power. Her mere touch burns away a man’s mind, making him into her mindless slave.”
Jennsen listened, rapt, appalled by such a notion. “And they really do anything she says—simply because she touched them?”
Sebastian handed her the waterskin. “Touched them with her evil magic. Emperor Jagang told me that her magic is so powerful that if she tells a man so enslaved that she wants him to die on the spot, he will do so.”
“You mean…he would kill himself right before her eyes?”
“No. I mean he would simply drop dead because she commanded it. His heart would stop, or something. He would just drop dead.”
Shaken by the very idea, Jennsen set the waterskin aside. She drew her bla
nket up around herself. She was exhausted, and she was weary of learning new things about Lord Rahl. Every time she learned something new, it was more terrible than the last thing. Her monster half brother, after he had killed their father, seemed to have wasted no time in assuming the family duty of hunting her.
After they’d eaten and seen to the horses, Jennsen curled up under a blanket and her cloak. She wished she could go to sleep and wake to find it had all been a bad dream. She almost wished she would never wake to have to face the future.
Because they had a fire, Sebastian didn’t sleep with his back to hers. She missed the comfort of that. With anguishing thoughts cascading through her mind, she stared into the flames, eyes wide open, as Sebastian fell asleep.
Jennsen wondered what she could do, now. Her mother was dead, so she had no real home. Home had been with her mother, wherever they were. She wondered if her mother was watching her from the world of the dead, along with all the other good spirits. She hoped her mother was at peace, and had happiness at last.
Jennsen felt an empty, desolate sorrow for Althea. There could be no help from the sorceress, and none wanted. Jennsen felt shame at the trouble she had brought to others who tried to help her. Her mother had died for the crime of giving birth to Jennsen. Althea’s sister, Lathea, had been murdered by Jennsen’s relentless hunters. Poor Althea was stuck forever in that awful swamp for the crime of trying to protect Jennsen when she had been but a child. Friedrich was almost as much a prisoner as Althea, his life robbed of many joys.
Jennsen remembered the thrill of Sebastian’s kiss. Althea and Friedrich had lost the pleasure of sharing passion. It was as if there had been that kiss for Jennsen, the awakening discovery, the spark of possibility, and then there could be no more, ever. She was in her own kind of swamp, also a prison of Lord Rahl’s making, trapped in the endless flight from killers.
She thought about what Sebastian had said, that she would never be free until she eliminated Richard Rahl.
Jennsen watched Sebastian as he slept. He had come unexpectedly into her life. He had saved her life. She could never have imagined, the first time she saw him, or the first night when she looked up into his eyes from across the fire after she had drawn the Grace at the cave entrance, that he would one day end up kissing her.