Naked Empire (Sword of Truth 8)

“The men of the Order came in through those gates we let stand wide for them and seized nearly all the women, from those still the age of girls to grandmothers. I stood with the other men, begging them to leave our women be, to leave us be. I told them that we had agreed to their demands to prove to them that we meant them no harm, but it did no good. They would not listen.

“I told Luchan, then, that I had sent Marilee to him as his condition for peace. I told him that they must honor their agreement. Luchan and his men laughed.

“I cannot say if what I saw then was real. Reality is in the realm of fate, and we, in this place we think we know as the world, cannot know it in full truth. That day, fate swept down on my people; we had no say in it. We know that we must not fight against fate, for it has already been foreordained by the true reality we cannot see.

“I watched as our women were dragged away. I watched, unable to do anything, as they screamed our names, as they reached out for us, as the hands of those big men held our women and bore them away from us. I had never heard such screams as I heard that day.”

The overcast seemed as if it would soon brush the tops of the trees. In the thick silence, Kahlan heard a bird in the bristlecone pines singing. Owen was alone, off in his solitary world of terrible memories. Richard stood, arms folded, watching the man, but saying nothing.

“I went to other towns,” Owen finally said. “In a couple of places, the Order had been there before me. The men of the Order did much the same to those towns as they had done to my town; they took the women. In some places they also took a few men.

“In other places I went, the Order had not come yet. As the speaker of my town, I told them of what had befallen my town and I urged others to do something. They were angry with me and said it was wrong to resist, that to resist was to give in to violence, to become no better than the savages. They urged me to renounce my outspoken ways and to heed the wisdom of the joined voices of our people that had brought enlightenment and thousands of years of peace. They told me that I was only looking at events through my limited eyes, and not the better judgment of the group.

“I went then to one of our important cities and told them again that the seal on the pass was broken and that the Imperial Order was upon us, and that something must be done. I urged them to listen to me and to consider what we could do to protect our people.

“Because I was so inconsiderately assertive, the assembly of speakers took me to the Wise One so that I might have his counsel. It is a great honor to have the words of the Wise One. The Wise One told me that I must forgive those who had done these things against my people, if we were to end the violence.

“The Wise One said that the anger and hostility shown by the men of the Order was a mark of their inner pain, a cry for help, and they must be shown compassion and understanding. I should have been humbled by such clear wisdom as could only come from the Wise One, but instead I spoke out of my wish for Marilee and all the other people to be returned from such men, and for the speakers to help me in this.

“The Wise One said that Marilee would find her own happiness without me and that I was guilty of selfishness for wanting to keep her for myself. He said that fate had come for the other people and it was not my place to make demands of fate.

“I asserted to the speakers and the Wise One that the men of the Order had not upheld the agreement made by Luchan for Marilee to be sent to them. The Wise One said that Marilee had acted properly by going in peace to the men so that the cycle of violence would end. He said that it was selfish and sinful for me to put my wants above peace she selflessly worked toward and that my attitude toward them was probably what had provoked the men to anger.

“I asked what I was to do, when I had acted honestly but they had not. The Wise One said that I was wrong to condemn men I did not know, men I had not first forgiven, or tried to embrace, or even to understand. He said that I must encourage them in the ways of peace by throwing myself before them and begging them to forgive me for acting in a way that kindled their inner pain by reminding them of past wrongs done to them.

“I told the Wise One, then, in front of all the other speakers, that I did not want to forgive these men or to embrace these men, but that I wanted to cast them out of our lives.

“I was given a denunciation.”

Richard handed Owen a cup of water but said nothing. Owen sipped at the water without seeing it.

“The gathering of speakers commanded me to go back to my town and seek the advice of those among whom I lived, commanding that I ask my people to counsel me back to our ways. I went back intending to redeem myself, only to discover that it had become worse than before.

“Now, the Order had returned to take whatever they wanted from the town—food and goods. We would have given them whatever they wanted, but they never asked, they just took. More of our men had been taken away, too—some of the boys and some of those who were young and strong. Other men, who had in some way offended the dignity of the men of the Order, had been murdered.

“People I knew stood staring with empty eyes at blood where our friends had died. In other such places, people gathered to mound remembrances over the blood. These places had become sacred shrines and people knelt there to pray. The children would not stop crying. No one would counsel me.

“Everyone in my town trembled behind doors, but they cast their eyes down and opened those doors when the men of the Order knocked, lest we offend them.

“I could not stand to be in our town any longer. I ran to the country, even though I was terrified that I would be alone. There, in the hills, I found other men, selfish as I, hiding in fear for their lives. Together, we decided to try to do something, to try to bring an end to the misery. We resolved to restore peace.

“At first, we sent representatives to speak with the men of the Order, to let them know that we meant them no harm, and that we only sought peace with them, and to ask what we could do to satisfy them. The men of the Order hung these men by their ankles from poles at the edge of our town and skinned them alive.

“I knew these men all my life, these men who had counseled me, advised me, broken fasts with me, sheltered me in their arms with joy when I had told them Marilee and I wanted to be wed. The men of the Order left these poor men to hang by their ankles as they screamed in agony in the hot summer sun, where the black-tipped races came and found them.

“I reminded myself that what I saw that day was not real, and that I should not believe such sights, that possibly my eyes were deceiving me as punishment for having improper thoughts, and that my mind could not possibly know if this sight was real or an illusion.

“Not every man that had gone to speak with the men of the Order was killed. A few of our men were sent back to us with word from the Order. They said that if we did not come down out of the hills and return to their rule in our town, to show that we did not intend to attack them, then they would begin skinning a dozen people a day, and hanging them on poles for the races, until either we returned to demonstrate our peaceful intent, or until every last person left in the town was skinned alive.

“Many of our men wept, unable to stand to think that they

would be the cause of a cycle of violence, so they went back to the town to show that they intended no harm.

“Not all of us went back. A few of us remained in the hills. Since most returned, and the Order had no count of us, they thought all had complied with their command.

“Those few of us who were left in the hills hid, living off the nuts, fruits, and berries we could find or the food we snuck back and stole. We slowly gathered together supplies to see us through. I told the other men with me that we should find out what the Order was doing with our people they had taken away. Since the men of the Order didn’t know us, we could sometimes mingle in with people working the fields or tending to animals and sneak back into our town without the Order knowing who we were—without knowing that we were men from the hills. Over the next months, we followed and watched the men of the Order.

“The children had been sent away, but the men of the Order had taken all the women to a place they built—an encampment, they called it—that they fortified against attack.”

Owen put his face in his hands again as he spoke through sobs. “They were using our women as breeding stock. They sought to have them bear children—as many children as they could birth—children of their soldiers. Some women were already pregnant. Most of those who weren’t already pregnant became pregnant. Over the next year and a half, many children were born. They were nursed for a time, and then they were all sent away as their mothers were gotten pregnant again.

“I don’t know where these children were taken—somewhere beyond our empire. The men who had been taken from the towns were also taken away beyond our empire.

“The men of the Order did not watch their captives well, since our people shunned violence, so a couple of men escaped and ran to the hills, where they found us. They told us that the Order had taken them to see the women, and told them that if they did not do as they were told, if they did not follow all the orders they were given, then all these women before them would die—that they would be skinned alive. These men who escaped did not know where they were to be taken, or what it was they were to do, only that if they did not follow the instructions given them, then they would be the cause of the violence to our women.