Naked Empire (Sword of Truth 8)

Another, nodding his agreement, said, “It’s your duty to help those who cannot bring themselves to do what you can do.”

Duty. The polite name put to the chains of servitude.

Richard turned away, closing his eyes as he squeezed his temples between fingers and thumb. He’d thought that he was beginning to get through to these men. He’d thought he would be able to get them to think for themselves—in their own best interest—rather than to function spontaneously according to the rote dictates of their indoctrination.

He could hardly believe that after all he’d told them, these men would still rather have their loved ones endure torture and brutal murder than harm the men committing the crimes. By refusing to face the nature of reality, these men were willingly giving the good over to evil, life over to death.

He realized then that it was even more basic than that. In the most fundamental sense, they were willfully choosing to reject the reality of evil.

Deep inside him, every breath pulled a stitch of pain. He had to get the antidote. He was running out of time.

But that alone would not solve his problems; his gift was killing him just as surely as the poison. He felt so sick from the pounding pain of his headache that he thought he might throw up. Even the magic of his sword was failing him.

Richard feared the poison, but in a more central way, he feared the encroaching death from within, from his gift. The poison, as dangerous as it was, had a clearly defined cause and cure. With his gift, he felt lost.

Richard looked back into Kahlan’s troubled eyes. He could see that she had no solution to offer. She stood in a weary pose, her arm hanging straight with the weight of the warning beacon that seemed to tell him only that he was dying, but offered no answers. Its whole reason for being was to call him to a proclaimed duty to help replace the boundary, as if his life was not his own, but belonged to anyone who laid claim to it by shackling him with a declaration of duty.

That concept—duty—was no less a poison than that which these men had given him…a call to sacrifice himself.

Richard took the small statue from Kahlan’s hand and stared down at it. The inky black had already enveloped half the length of the figure. His life was being consumed. The sand continued to trickle away. His time was running out.

The stone figure of Kaja-Rang, the long-dead wizard who had summoned him with the warning beacon and charged him with an impossible task, loomed over him as if in silent rebuke.

Behind him, the men huddled close, affirming to one another their beliefs, their ways, their responsibility to their ancient ideals, that the men of the Order were acting as they were because they were misguided and could still be reformed. They spoke of the Wise One and all the great speakers who had committed them to the path of peace and non-violence. They all reaffirmed the belief that they must follow the path that had been laid down for them from the very beginning by their land’s founders, their ancestors, who had given them their customs, their beliefs, their values, their way of living.

Trying to elevate these men to understand what was right and necessary seemed as difficult as trying to lift them by a slender thread. That thread had broken.

Richard felt trapped by the deluded convictions of these people, by their poison, by the headaches, by Nicholas hunting them, and by a long-dead wizard who had reached out from the underworld to try to enslave him to a long-dead duty.

Anger welling up inside him, Richard cocked his arm and heaved the warning beacon at the statue of Kaja-Rang.

The men ducked as the small figure shot by just over their heads to shatter against the stone base of the statue. Amber fragments and inky black shards flew in every direction. The sand from inside splattered in a stain across the front of the granite pedestal.

The cowering men fell silent.

Overhead, wisps trailing from the sullen clouds drifted by, almost close enough to reach up and touch. A few icy flakes of snow floated along in the still air. All around, a frigid fog had moved in to envelop the surrounding mountains, leaving the top of the pass with the stone sentinel seeming isolated and otherworldly, as if this were all there was to existence. Richard stood in the dead quiet at the center of everyone’s attention.

The words written in High D’Haran on the statue’s base echoed through Richard’s mind.

Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond…for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.

The High D’Haran words streamed again and again through his mind. The translation of those words just didn’t feel right.

“Dear spirits,” Richard whispered in sudden realization. “I had it wrong. That’s not what it says.”

Chapter 45

Kahlan felt as if her heart were being crushed by the ordeal these men were putting Richard through. Just when she’d thought he had gotten them to understand the truth of what was needed, it seemed to have slipped away as the men reverted to their willful blindness.

Richard, though, seemed almost to have forgotten the men. He stood staring at where the warning beacon had shattered against the statue. Kahlan stepped closer to him and whispered.

“What do you mean, you had it wrong, and that’s not what it says? What are you talking about?”

“The translation,” he said in what sounded like startled comprehension. He stood motionless, facing the towering statue of Kaja-Rang. “Remember how I told you that it was an odd way to phrase what it said?”

Kahlan glanced to the statue and then back to Richard. “Yes.”

“It wasn’t odd at all; I just had it wrong. I was trying to make it say what I thought it would say—that those beyond couldn’t see magic—instead of just seeing what was before me. What I told you before isn’t what it says….”

When his voice trailed off, Kahlan reached up and gripped his arm to draw his attention. “What do you mean, that’s not what it says?”

Richard gestured toward the statue. “I see what I did wrong with the phrasal sequence, why I was having trouble with it. I told you I wasn’t sure of the translation. I was right to have doubts. It doesn’t say, ‘Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond…for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.’”

Jennsen leaned in close beside Kahlan. “Are you sure?”

Richard looked back at the statue, his voice distant. “I am now.”

Kahlan pulled on his arm, making him look at her. “So what does it say?”

His gray eyes met her gaze briefly before turning to the eyes of the statue of Kaja-Rang staring out at the Pillars of Creation, at his final safeguard protecting the world from these people. Instead of answering her, he started away.

The men parted as Richard strode toward the statue. Kahlan stayed close on his heels, Cara following in her wake. Jennsen gathered up Betty’s rope and pulled her along. The men, already backing out of the way for Richard, kept a wary eye on the goat and her mistress as they passed. Tom stayed where he was, keeping a careful but unobtrusive watch over all the men.

At the statue, Richard swiped the dusting of snow off the ledge, revealing again the words carved in High D’Haran. Kahlan watched his eyes moving along the line of words, reading them to himself. He had a kind of excitement in his movements that told her he was racing after an important quarry.

For the moment, she could also see that his headache was gone. She couldn’t understand the way it ebbed from time to time, but she was relieved to see strength in the way he moved. Hands spread on the stone, leaning on his arms, he looked up from the words. Without the headache, there was a vibrant clarity in his gray eyes.

“Part of this story has been puzzling,” he said. “I understand now. It doesn’t say, ‘Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond…for beyond is evil: those who cannot see.’”

Jennsen’s nose wrinkled. “It doesn’t? You mean it wasn’t meant to be about these pristinely ungifted people?”

“Oh, it was about them, all right, but not in that respect.” Richard tapped a finger to the carved w