Naked Empire (Sword of Truth 8)

Richard took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Well, that’s the part that in a way connects us. You see, as I understand it, magic needs balance in order to function.”

There were knowing nods all around, as if these pristinely ungifted men all had an intimate understanding of magic.

“When Alric Rahl used magic to create this bond in order to protect his people,” Richard went on, “there needed to always be a Lord Rahl to complete the bond, to maintain its power. Not all wizards bear children who also possess this gifted ability, so part of what Alric Rahl did when he created this bond was to make it so that the Lord Rahl would always bear one son who had magic, who had the gift, and could complete this bond with the people of D’Hara. In this way they would always be protected.”

Richard held up a finger to make his point as he swept his gaze over the crowd of men. “What they didn’t know at the time was that this magic inadvertently created its own balance. While the Lord Rahl always produced a gifted heir—a wizard like him—it was only discovered later that he also occasionally produced offspring who were entirely without any magic.”

Richard could see by the blank looks that the men didn’t grasp what he was telling them. He imagined that for people living such isolated lives, his story must seem rather confusing, if not far-fetched. He remembered his own confusion about magic before the boundary had come down and he’d met Kahlan. He hadn’t been raised around magic and he still didn’t understand most of it himself. He’d been born with both sides of the gift, and yet he didn’t know how to control it.

“You see,” he said, “only some people have magic—are gifted, as it’s called. But all people are born with at least a very tiny spark of the gift, even though they can’t manipulate magic. Until just recently, everyone thought of these people as ungifted. You see? The gifted, like wizards and sorceresses, can manipulate magic, and the rest of the people can’t, so they were believed to be ungifted.

“But it turns out that this isn’t accurate, since there is an infinitesimal spark of the gift in everyone born. This tiny spark of the gift is actually what allows people to interact with the magic in the world around them, that is, with things and creatures that have magical properties, and with people who are gifted in a more comprehensive sense—those who do have the ability to manipulate magic.”

“Some people in Bandakar have magic, too,” a man said. “True magic. Only those who have never seen—”

“No,” Richard said, cutting him off. He didn’t want them losing track of his account. “Owen told me about what you people believe is magic. That’s not magic, that’s mysticism. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about real magic that produces real results in the real world. Forget what you’ve been taught about magic, about how faith supposedly creates what you believe in and that is real magic. It’s not real. It’s just the fanciful illusion of magic in people’s imaginations.”

“But it is real,” someone said in a respectful but firm voice. “More real than what you see and feel.”

Richard turned a harsh look on the men. “If it’s so real, then why did you have to use a known poison on me that was mixed by a man who had worked his whole life with herbs? Because you know what’s real, that’s why; when it was vital to your self-interest, to your lives, you resorted to dealing in reality, to what you know really works.”

Richard pointed back at Kahlan. “The Mother Confessor has real magic. It’s no fanciful curse put on someone and when they die ten years later people believe the curse was the cause. She has real magic that is in elemental ways linked to death, so it affects even you. She can touch someone, with this real magic, and in an instant they will be dead. Not ten years from now—right now, on the spot.”

Richard stood resolutely in front of the men, gazing from eye to eye. “If someone doesn’t believe that is real magic, then let’s have a test. Let them perform their faith-based magic and put a spell on me—to kill me right here and now. After they’ve done that, then they will come forward and be touched by the Mother Confessor’s very real, lethal power. Then everyone else will be able to see the results and judge for themselves.” He looked from face to face. “Anyone willing to take up the test? Any magicians among all you ungifted people willing to try it?”

When the men remained silent, no one moving, Richard went on.

“So, it would seem that you men do have some understanding of what’s real and what isn’t. Keep that in mind. Learn from it.

“Now, I told you how the Lord Rahl always bore a son with magic so he could pass on the rule of D’Hara and his gifted ability in order to make the bond work. But, as I said, the bond that Alric Rahl created may have had an unintended consequence.

“Only later was it discovered that the Lord Rahl, possibly as a means of balance, also sometimes produced offspring that were entirely without any magic—not just ungifted in the way most people are, but unlike any people ever born before: they were pristinely ungifted. These pristinely ungifted people had absolutely no spark of the gift whatsoever.

“Because of that, because they were pristinely ungifted, they were unable to interact with the real magic in the world. They were unable to be touched by magic at all. For them, magic might as well not exist because they were not born with the ability to see it or to interact with it. You might say they were like a bird that could not fly. They looked like a bird, they had feathers, they ate bugs, but they couldn’t fly.

“Back then in that time, three thousand years ago, after the bond had been created to protect people from dream walkers in the war, the wizards finally succeeded in placing a barrier between the Old and the New World. Because those in the Old World could no longer come to the New World to wage war, the great war ended. Peace finally came.

“The people of the New World discovered, though, that they had a problem. These pristinely ungifted offspring of the Lord Rahl passed this trait on to their children. Every offspring of a marriage with at least one of these pristinely ungifted partners bears pristinely ungifted children—always, every time. As these offspring married and had children and then grandchildren and then great-grandchildren, as there were more and more of them, that pristinely ungifted trait began spreading throughout the population.

“People, at the time, were frightened because they depended on magic. Magic was part of their world. Magic was what had saved them from the dream walkers. Magic had created the barrier that protected them from the horde from the Old World. Magic had ended the war. Magic healed people, found lost children, produced beautiful creations of art that inspired and brought joy. Magic could help guide people in the course of future events.

“Some towns grew up around a gifted person who could serve people’s needs. Many gifted people earned a living performing such services. In some things, magic gave people control over nature and thus made the lives of everyone better. Things accomplished with the aid of magic improved the living conditions of nearly everyone. Magic was a force of individual creation and thus individual accomplishment. Nearly everyone derived some benefit from it.

“This is not to say that magic was or is indispensable, but that it was a useful aid, a tool. Magic was like their right arm. Yet it’s the mind of man, not his magic, that is indispensable—much like you could survive without your right arm, but you couldn’t survive without your mind. But magic had become intertwined in the lives of everyone, so many believed that it was absolutely indispensable.

“The people came to feel that this new threat—the pristinely ungifted trait spreading through the population—would be the end of everything they knew, everything that they thought was important, that it would be the end of their most vital protection—magic.”

Richard gazed ou

t at all the faces, waiting to make sure that the men had grasped the essence of the story, that they understood how desperate the people must have been, and why.

“So, what did the people do about these new pristinely ungifted people among them?” a man in the back asked.

In a quiet tone, Richard said, “Something terrible.”

He pulled the book from a leather pouch on his belt and held it up for all the men to see as he again paced before them. The clouds, laden with storms of snow, rolled silently through the frigid valley pass, bound for the peaks above them.

“This book is called The Pillars of Creation. That’s what the wizards back then called these pristinely ungifted people—pillars of Creation—because they had the power, with this trait that they passed along to their offspring, to alter the very nature of mankind. They were the foundation of an entirely new kind of people—people without any connection to magic.

“I only just a short time ago came across this book. It’s meant for the Lord Rahl, and others, so that they will know about these pristinely ungifted people who are unaffected by magic. The book tells the history of how these people came about—through those born to the Lord Rahl—along with the history of what was discovered about them. It also reveals what the people back then, thousands of years ago, did about these pillars of Creation.”

Men rubbed their arms in the cold air as Richard slowly paced before them. They all looked caught up in the story.

“So,” Owen asked, “what did they do?”

Richard came to a stop and stood watching their eyes before he spoke.

“They banished them.”

Astonished whispering broke out among the men. They were stunned to hear the final solution. These people understood banishment, they understood it all too well, and they could sympathize with these banished people of so long ago.