“Your kind condemned and banished them; we have welcomed them among us. In fact, we wish to model man himself after them. Our cause is theirs by their very nature—purity of mankind without any taint of magic. In this way the world will be one and at last at peace.
“I have the advantage over you, wizard; I have right on my side. I don’t need magic to win; you do. I have mankind’s best future in mind and have set our irreversible course.
“With the help of these people, I took your Keep. With their help, I have recovered invaluable treasures from within. You couldn’t do a thing to stop them, now could you? Man will now set his own course, without the curse of magic darkening his struggle.
“I now have a Slide to help us to that noble end. He is working with those people for the benefit of our cause. In doing so, Nicholas has already proved invaluable.
“What’s more, that Slide, which your kind could never control, has vowed to deliver to me the two I want most: your grandson and his wife. I have great things planned for them—well, for her, anyway.” His red-faced rage melted into a grin. “For him, not so great things.”
Zedd could hardly contain his own rage. Were it not for the collar stifling his gift, he would have reduced the entire place to ash by now.
“Once this Nicholas becomes adept at what he can do, you will find that he will want revenge of his own, and a price you may find far too high.”
Jagang spread his arms. “There, you are wrong, wizard. I can afford whatever Nicholas wants for Lord Rahl and the Mother Confessor. There is no such thing as a price too high.
“You may think me greedy and selfish, but you would be wrong. While I enjoy the spoils, I most relish the role I play in bringing heathens to heel. It is the end that truly concerns me, and in the end I will have mankind bow as they should to our just cause and the Creator’s ways.”
Jagang seemed to have spent his flash of intensity. He leaned back and scooped walnuts from a silver bowl.
“Zedd be wrong,” Adie finally spoke up. “You have shown us that you know what you be doing. You will be able to control your Slide just fine. May I suggest you keep him close, to aid you in your efforts.”
Jagang smiled at her. “You, too, my dried-up old sorceress, will be telling me all you know about what is in those crates.”
“Bah,” Adie scoffed. “You be a fool with worthless treasures. I hope you pull a muscle carrying them with you everywhere.”
“Adie’s right,” Zedd put in. “You are an incompetent oaf who is only going to—”
“Oh, come, come, you two. Do you think you will throw me into a fit of rage and I’ll slaughter the both of you on the spot?” His wicked grin returned. “Spare you the proper justice of what is to come?”
Zedd and Adie fell silent.
“When I was a boy,” Jagang said in a quieter tone as he stared off into the distance, “I was nothing. A street tough in Altur’Rang. A bully. A thief. My life was empty. My future was the next meal.
“One day, I saw a man coming down the street. He looked like he might have some money and I wanted it. It was getting dark. I came up silently behind him, intending to bash in his head, but just then he turned and looked me in the eye.
“His smile stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t a kindly smile, or a weak smile, but the kind of smile a man gives you when he knows he can kill you where you stand if it pleases him.
“He pulled a coin from his pocket and flipped it to me, and then, without a word, turned and went on his way.
“A few weeks later, in the middle of the night, I woke up in an alley, where I slept under old blankets and crates, and I saw a shadowy form out by the street. I knew it was him before he flipped me the coin and moved off into the darkness.
“The next time I saw him, he was sitting on a stone bench at the edge of an old square that some of the less fortunate men of Altur’Rang frequented. Like me, no one would give these men a chance in life. People’s greed had sucked the life out of these men. I used to go there to look at them, to tell myself I didn’t want to grow up to be like them, but I knew I would, a nobody, human refuse waiting to pass into the shadow of oblivion in the afterlife. A soul without worth.
“I sat down on the bench beside the man and asked him why he’d given me money. Instead of giving me some answer that most people would give a boy, he told me about mankind’s grand purpose, the meaning of life, and how we are here only as a brief stop on the way to what the Creator has in store for us—if we are strong enough to rise to the challenge.
“I’d never heard such a thing. I told him that I didn’t think that such things mattered in my life because I was only a thief. He said that I was only striking back from the injustice of my lot in life. He said that mankind was evil for making me the way I was and only through sacrifice and helping those like me could man hope to be redeemed in the afterlife. He opened my mind to man’s sinful ways.
“Before he left, he turned back and asked me if I knew how long eternity was. I said no. He said that our miserable time in this world was but a blink before we entered the next world. That really made me think, for the first time, about our greater purpose.
“Over the next months, Brother Narev took the time to talk to me, to tell me about Creation and eternity. He gave me a vision of a possible better future where before I had none. He taught me about sacrifice and redemption. I thought I was doomed to an eternity of darkness until he showed me the light.
“He took me in, in return for helping him with life’s chores.
“For me, Brother Narev was a teacher, a priest, an advisor, a means to salvation”—Jagang’s gaze rose to Zedd—“and a grandfather, all rolled into one.
“He gave me the fire of what mankind can and should be. He showed me the true sin of selfish greed and the dark void of where it would lead mankind. Over time, he made me the fist of his vision. He was the soul; I was the bone and muscle.
“Brother Narev allowed me the honor of igniting the revolution. He placed me at the fore of the rise of mankind over the oppression of sinfulness. We are the new hope for the future of man, and Brother Narev himself allowed me to be the one to carry his vision in the cleansing flames of mankind’s redemption.”
Jagang leaned back in his chair, fixing Zedd with as grim a look as Zedd had ever seen.
“And then this spring, while carrying Brother Narev’s noble challenge to mankind, to those who had never had a chance to see the vision of what man can be, of the future without the blight of magic and oppression and greed and groveling to be better than others, I came to Aydindril…and what do I find?
“Brother Narev’s head on a pike, with a note, ‘Compliments of Richard Rahl.’
“The man I admired most in the world, the man who brought to us all the hallowed dream of mankind’s true purpose in this life as charge
d by the Creator himself, was dead, his head stuck on a pike by your grandson.
“If ever there was a greater blasphemy, a greater crime against the whole of mankind, I don’t know of it.”
Sullen shapes shifted across Jagang’s black eyes. “Richard Rahl will be dealt justice. He will suffer such a blow, before I send him to the Keeper. I just wanted you to know your fate, old man. Your grandson will know something of that kind of pain, and the additional torment of knowing that I have his bride and will make her pay dearly for her own crimes.” A ghost of the grin returned. “After he has paid this price, then I will kill him.”
Zedd yawned. “Nice story. You left out all the parts where you slaughter innocent people by the tens of thousands because they don’t want to live under your vile rule or Narev’s sick, twisted vision.
“On second thought, don’t bother with the sorry excuses. Just cut off my head, put it on a pike, and be done with it.”
Jagang’s smile returned in its full glory. “Not as easily as that, old man. First you have some talking to do.”
Chapter 38
“Ah, yes,” Zedd said. “The torture. I almost forgot.”
“Torture?”
With two fingers Jagang signaled a woman to the side. The older Sister standing wringing her hands flinched at seeing his gaze on her and immediately rushed off behind a curtain of wall hangings. Zedd could hear her whispering urgent instructions to people beyond, and then the thump of feet rushing across the carpets and out of the tent.
Jagang went back to his leisurely meal while Zedd and Adie stood before him, starving, dying of thirst. The dream walker finally set his knife across a plate. Seeing this, the slaves sprang into action, clearing away the variety of dishes, most having been tasted, but that hardly made a dent in them. In a matter of moments the entire table was emptied of the food and drink, leaving only the books, the scrolls, the candles, and the silver bowl of walnuts.
Sister Tahirah, the Sister who had captured Zedd and Adie at the Keep, stood to the side, her hands clasped before her as she watched them. Despite her obvious fear of Jagang, and her servile fawning over the man, the knowing smirk at Zedd and Adie betrayed the pleasure she was deriving from what was to come.