Severed Souls (Sword of Truth 14)

“Everything and everyone. It’s time you and Kahlan lived your lives for each other. You’ve both sacrificed your lives together and given up everything you could have with each other in order to fight on behalf of everyone else. I think the time has come for you both to give up everything else and go live for yourselves, for your own happiness. You have done enough, Richard. You have done more

than enough.”

Richard was stunned. Richard knew by his grandfather’s tone of voice that he was deadly serious.

“I don’t understand, Zedd. How can I possibly do such a thing when everyone is depending on me?”

Zedd let out a sigh. “Richard, the world was getting by for a very long time before you ever came along. How many times throughout history has disaster been right around the corner? How many times has the world of life been threatened and on the brink? Such things have been going on since long before you ever came along to save the day.”

“Yes, but this is one of those threats that even the people back in the great war warned about, and they identified me as the only one who would have a chance to stop it. This is the time when I’m the one meant to step in and act.”

Zedd thought about his answer for a moment. “Since the dawn of man, there have always been people bent on harming others. There have been periods of peace and enlightenment, and there have been dark times, but through it all, mankind survived. That cycle has repeated itself over and over. It wasn’t always easy, and despite those who would have it otherwise, life went on.”

Richard let out a sigh of his own. “It seems like people would learn from that, and let others live their lives.”

Zedd shrugged. “I personally believe that it’s a basic flaw in mankind’s makeup.”

“What do you mean? What sort of flaw?”

“Hate. I believe it is a fundamental defect in mankind. While other creatures live to nurture and live their lives, only some of mankind lives that way.”

“Sure, there are both good and bad people. I don’t understand what you mean by a flaw, though.”

“Well, revulsion—hate—is a fundamental function of nature. Hate is a judgment, and judgment is necessary to life. Mice hate owls, so they hide. Rabbits hate wolves. That judgment makes them always ready to run.

“It’s necessary and natural to be repelled by things that are harmful to life. It’s a built-in natural protective mechanism. We don’t have to think it through each time because the judgment is automatic.

“We hate the smell of corpses, for example. We hate it when thieves steal what belongs to us. We hate murderers. It’s natural to hate those things, the same way it is natural for birds to hate cats and make a racket in protest whenever one roams by.”

Some of Richard’s earliest memories were of Zedd speaking in this role, passing along lessons, so he simply listened as his grandfather went on.

“Hatred of the smell of corpses make us bury or burn the dead which keeps us from getting diseases. Hatred of thieves prompts us to guard against those who would sneak in and steal the food from our children’s mouths. We hate murderers because they steal our lives. That kind of hatred breeds caution and causes us to take measures to protect ourselves. We lock doors, we carry weapons, we take a variety of measures to protect our loved ones from those who would cause them harm.

“In animals that hatred stops there. A rabbit does not hate sheep, for example. You will see rabbits and sheep eating grass side by side. Animals will protect their own territory so that they can provide for themselves and their young, but they don’t take more territory simply to possess it.

“In humans, we communicate, enabling us to pass our judgment on to others. We might say ‘I hated traveling that route because it’s so steep that I almost fell and broke my neck.’ That judgment, framed in the emotion of hate, is so basic to our nature that it is easily transferred to others.

“But in many people that capacity for hatred loses its natural, rational motive. The emotion runs wild and becomes their dominant trait. They are no longer able to appreciate the good in anything. Having lost the link to rational purpose, they react purely on the emotion. Because of the power of that emotion, their minds become set in that single direction. It becomes so all-consuming that many of those people lose even their capacity to love life. They can only hate.

“The good in life is what quenches hatred in normal people, the way a smile can calm a quarrel. But in those people who carry this flaw, their hatred burns so hot they come to hate what is good in life specifically because they don’t want to stop hating. Hatred becomes the driving purpose of their lives. They live to hate.

“That flaw twists nature in on itself. In order to preserve their state of hatred, they must attack the good, wipe away that smile, so to speak.

“That single-minded emotion of hate has been a fundamental, inherent flaw in mankind’s nature since the dawn of time. It drives people to fight, to conquer, to dominate, to destroy. Hatred has such powerful emotions attached to it that others take it up out of fear. In that way, hate spreads like a panic in a crowd.

“Expanded beyond its rational bounds, hate exists entirely in the realm of raw emotion, where it ceases to serve a useful purpose, and instead becomes a powerful corrosive that eats away at the fabric of civilization itself, at the very ability of people to interact peacefully. It spawns fights among children and among neighbors, it spawns wars, it spawns genocide and slaughter. It’s present in every great land and every tiny village. It creates bullies and tyrants. That unquenchable, passionate, rampant flaw is universal throughout mankind.

“One of the wizard’s rules, actually: There have always been those who hate, and there always will be.

“You can’t change it. You can only try to keep such people from harming you, for if they can they will. In many ways, fighting them only reinforces that emotion of hate. Even protecting yourself from them only makes them more determined to cause you harm.

“People born with that inherent, tragic defect are like an animal born without eyes. They can only perceive things through the prism of hate. Since they have in a way lost their ability to see, lost that compassionate, tolerant connection to the rest of humanity, they have in a way lost their souls.

“The half people are driven by their nature of being born without a soul, so that trait drives them to behave the way they do. It is a fundamental flaw in their nature that they cannot change. Everything they do is driven by that flaw.

“In much the same way, those driven by hate are like the half people, and in a fundamental way they, too, are alive but without a soul. Both are driven by their inherent defect to destroy life that is complete and wholesome.

“That hatred is so all-consuming in some that they would even deliberately destroy themselves if it enabled them to destroy others along with them. Hatred provides them with the justification for every sort of evil.

“People who carry this inherent trait have been around long before you ever came along, Richard, and they will be around long after you are gone. It’s a constant struggle for balance in mankind itself—those who create and those who want only to destroy.”

“But we can’t let them win,” Richard insisted.

Zedd smiled sadly. “Even if you win this battle, the next day someone else will rise up. This is the basic struggle for mankind’s destiny—the struggle between civilized reason and savage emotion. It is endless and will go on until it eventually destroys the human race.

“In a perverse way, such evil is encouraged by the mere act of trying to do right by others. That good inflames their hate, drives them on, so in a way trying to do good only feeds evil.

“Maybe the meaning of ending prophecy to stop Sulachan is that you must end life itself. Perhaps it is nature’s intent for mankind to die out because the defect disqualifies us as a viable species. Perhaps our species does not deserve to survive.

“In the end, it’s a self-canceling flaw in mankind. After all, if those who hate win, then mankind itself is destroyed. Who are you to decide what the outcome of nature should be? That our species deserves to survive?

“In a way, your thinking that you can decide the course of nature is just as deluded as Sulachan’s. Who are you, in the scheme of things?

“If it is nature’s way to correct its mistakes, then mankind will die out. If that is the case, it matters little what you do. If t

he die is cast, then if not this time, if not now, then perhaps right after you have left this life, having squandered your entire existence on an ultimately hopeless struggle, the world of man will end anyway.

“Perhaps on the day you die and are no longer in the world of life, after fighting to save the good and decent people of the world, the final man will be born who will tip the scales and have what in his hatred of life he wants most, and finally succeed in throwing mankind into the oblivion of extinction.

“That is why I think you should choose to live your own life, Richard. Take what life you have left and live it for yourself. Leave this fight for mankind to mankind. Ease the world down off your shoulders. Take the weight off Kahlan’s shoulders. She carries that weight in part because you choose to do so. Let her live, Richard. Let yourself live.”

“But I am the Lord Rahl—”

“Are you doing any of this in order to rule? No. You are not fighting so that others will lift you up as an emperor. You instead want to lift others by letting them live up to their own potential. You are not struggling to rule, but to give others a chance at ruling their own lives. So stop ruling and let them live those lives.

“It should not be up to you alone to fight on behalf of life, it should be up to everyone. That is how nature balances itself.

“If enough people are strong enough in their love of life, then mankind will survive. If there are too many who do not value their lives, but instead hate life and those who love it, then mankind will not survive. You alone can’t tip the balance.

“Perhaps mankind does not deserve to survive. If that is the case, then nothing you do can really change the course.

“You have saved the day for everyone enough times, Richard, given them all another day to live. When is it time for your life, for you and Kahlan to live?

“I think the time has come for you to go off and save yourself. Leave the world of life to work it out on its own, the way all of nature in the end must do.”