Phantom (19 page)

“It’s a lot easier to convince people to die for your cause if you first make them eager to die,” Nicci said in a bitter voice. “It’s a lot easier to get boys to bare their breasts to arrows and swords if they have faith that doing so is a selfless act that will make the Creator smile and welcome them into the eternal glory in the afterworld.

“Once the Order teaches people to be true believers, what they have really done is to forge monsters who will not only die for the cause, but kill for it as well. True believers are consumed by an implacable hatred for those who don’t believe. There is no more dangerous, no more vicious, no more brutal an individual than one who has been blinded by the Order’s beliefs. Such a believer is not shaped by reason so he is not bound by it. As a consequence, there is no mechanism of restraint on his hatred. These are killers who will only too happily kill for the cause, absolutely secure in the knowledge they are doing the right and the moral thing.”

Nicci’s knuckles stood out white and bloodless as her fists tightened. Though the room seemed to ring with the sudden, terrible silence, the power of her words still echoed through Richard’s mind. He thought that the strength of the aura crackling around her might provoke a sudden lightning storm within the anteroom.

“As I said, the premise is pretty simple.” Nicci shook her head in bitter resignation, the emotion draining from her bleak pronouncement. “For most of the people of the Old World, and now the people of the New World, there is no choice but to follow the Order’s teachings. If their faith wavers they are sternly reminded of the eternity of unimaginable suffering that awaits the faithless. If that fails to work, then faith will be driven into them by the point of a sword.”

“But there must be some way to redeem these people,” Jebra said at last. “Isn’t there a way to bring them to their senses and get them to cast off the teachings of the Order?”

Nicci looked away from Jebra to stare off into the distance. “I was brought up from birth under the Order’s teachings and I came to my senses.”

Still staring off into a dark storm of memories, she fell silent for a moment, as if she were reliving her seemingly endless struggle to grasp at life, to escape the haunting clutches of the Order.

“But you cannot imagine how profoundly difficult it was for me to emerge from that realm of dark beliefs. I doubt that anyone who has not been lost in the suffocating world of the Order’s teachings can begin to grasp what it’s like to believe that your life is worthless and of no value, or grasp the shadow of terror that falls over you every time you try to turn away from what you have been taught is your only means of salvation.”

Her watery gaze hesitantly drifted to Richard. He knew. He had been there. He knew what it was like.

“I was redeemed,” she whispered in a broken voice, “but it was far from easy.”

Jebra looked encouraged by what Richard knew was no real encouragement. “But it worked for you,” she said, “so maybe it will work for others.”

“She is different from most of those under the spell of the Order,” Richard said as he gazed into Nicci’s blue eyes, eyes that betrayed the naked emotion of how much he meant to her. “She was driven by a need to understand, to know, if what she had been taught to believe was true or if there was more to life, if there was something worth living for.

“Most of those taught by the Order have no such doubts. They block out those kinds of questions and instead tenaciously cling to their beliefs.”

“But what makes you think that they won’t change?” Jebra didn’t look ready to abandon the thread of hope. “If Nicci changed, then why can’t others?”

Still gazing into Nicci’s eyes, Richard said, “I think they’re able to block out any doubt in what they believe because they’ve internalized their indoctrination, no longer viewing it as specific ideas that have been drilled into them. They begin to experience the ideas they’ve been taught as feelings, which evolve into powerful emotional conviction. I think that’s the trick to the process. They are convinced within their own minds that they are experiencing original thought rather than those discrete ideas that have been taught to them as they grew up.”

Nicci cleared her throat as she looked away from Richard’s gaze and turned her attention once more to Jebra.

“I think Richard is right. I was aware of that very thing within my own
thinking, aware of that inner conviction that was actually born of a carefully crafted manner of instruction.

“Some people who secretly value their lives will join in a revolt if they can see that there is a realistic chance to win—that’s what happened in Altur’Rang—but if there isn’t that chance then they know that they must repeat the words that the followers of the Order want to hear or risk losing their most valuable possession: life. Under the Order’s rule, you believe as they teach you, or you die. It’s as simple as that.

“There are people in the Old World working to join together those who will revolt, working to set the fires of freedom for those who want to seize an opportunity to control their own destiny. So there are those who truly want a chance at freedom and will act to gain it. Jagang, too, knows of such efforts and has sent troops to crush those revolts. But I also know only too well that most of the people of the Old World would never willingly cast off their beliefs; they see doing so as sinful. They will work to ruthlessly crush any uprising. If need be, they will cling to their faith right into their graves. The ones—”

Shota irritably lifted a hand, cutting Nicci off. “Yes, yes, some will, some won’t. Many wiffle-waffle. It doesn’t matter. Hoping for a revolt is pointless. It’s just idle wishing for salvation to arrive out of the blue.

“The legions of soldiers from the Old World are here, now, in the New World, so it’s the New World that we must worry about, not the Old World and what the mood for revolt might or might not be. The Old World, for the most part, believes in the Order, supports the Order, and encourages the Order to conquer the rest of the world.”

Shota glided forward, directing a meaningful look at Richard. “The only way for civilization to survive is to send the invading soldiers of the Order through that doorway to their longed-for eternity in the world of the dead. There is no redeeming those whose minds are lost to beliefs they are eager to die for. The only way to stop the Order and their teachings is to kill enough of them that they can’t continue.”

“Pain does have a way of changing people’s minds,” Cara said.

Shota gave the Mord-Sith a nod of approval. “If they come to truly understand without any doubt that they will not win, that their efforts will lead to certain death, then perhaps some will abandon their belief and cause. It very well could be that despite their faith in the teachings of the Order, few of them actually, deep down inside, really want to die to test it.

“But what of it? Does that really matter to us? What we do know is that a great many really are so fanatical that they welcome death. Hundreds of thousands have already died, proving that they really are willing to make that sacrifice. The rest of these men must be killed or they will kill us all and doom the rest of the world to a long, grinding descent into savagery.

“That is what we face. That is the reality of it.”

Shota turned a hot look on Richard. “Jebra has shown you what will happen at the hands of these soldiers if you don’t stop them. Do you think those men entertain any rational notions of the meaning of their lives? Or that they might join in a revolt against the Order if given a chance? Hardly.

“I’m here to show you what has already happened to many so that you will understand what is going to happen to everyone else if you don’t do something to stop it.

“A precise understanding of how the soldiers of the Order came to be, the choices they have made in their lives that brought them rampaging into the lives of innocent people, and the reasons behind those choices, are beyond being our concern. They are what they are. They are destroyers, killers. They are here. That is all that matters, now. They must be stopped. If they are dead, they will cease to be a threat. It’s as simple as that.”

Richard wondered how in the world she expected him to accomplish such a “simple” thing. She might as well be asking him to pull the moon down out of the sky and use it to crush the Imperial Order army.

As if reading his mind, Nicci spoke up again. “We may all agree with you, with everything you have come here to say—and in fact we didn’t need you to tell us what we already know, as if you think us children and only you are wise. But you don’t understand what you’re asking. The army that Jebra saw, the army that marched up into Galea and so easily crushed their defenses and killed so many people, is a minor and rather insignificant unit of the Imperial Order.”

“You can’t be serious,” Jebra said.

Nicci finally withdrew her glare from Shota and looked at Jebra. “Did you see any gifted?”

“Gifted? Why, no, I guess not,” she said after a moment’s thought.

“That’s because they didn’t warrant having their own gifted to command,” Nicci said. “If they had gifted, Shota would not have been able to
so easily get in there and then take you right out of the place. But they had no gifted. They’re a relatively minor force and as such they’re considered expendable.

“That’s why the supplies took so long to reach them. All supplies first went north to Jagang’s main force. Once they had what they needed they then allowed supplies to go to other units, like the one up in Galea. They are only one of Jagang’s expeditionary forces.”

“But you don’t understand.” Jebra stood. “They were a huge army. I was there. I saw them with my own eyes.” She dry-washed her hands as she glanced around at everyone in the room. “I was there, working for them month after month. I saw how massive their numbers were. How could I not grasp the extent of their forces? I’ve told you about all they accomplished.”

Unimpressed, Nicci shook her head. “They were nothing.”

Jebra licked her lips, distress settling into her expression. “Perhaps I have not done an adequate job of describing it, of making clear just how many soldiers of the Order invaded Galea. I’m sorry that I’ve failed in making you understand how easily they crushed all those determined defenders.”

“You did a very good job of reporting accurately what you saw,” Nicci said in a gentler tone as she squeezed the woman’s shoulder in sympathetic reassurance. “But you only saw a part of the whole picture. The part you saw, frightening as it surely was, was insignificant compared to the rest of it. What you saw could not begin to prepare you for seeing the main force led by Emperor Jagang. I’ve spent a great deal of time in Jagang’s main encampments; I know what I’m talking about. Compared to their main force, the one you saw does not qualify as imposing.”

“She’s right,” Zedd said in a grim voice. “I hate to admit it, but she’s right. Jagang’s main army is vastly more powerful than the one that invaded Galea. I fought to slow their advance up through the Midlands as they steadily drove us back toward Aydindril, so I ought to know. Seeing them come is like watching the approach of uncountable minions of the underworld come to swallow the living.”

He looked stoic in his simple robes, standing at the top of the five steps, watching, listening to what others had to say. Richard knew, though, that his grandfather was anything but indifferent. Zedd’s way was often to listen to what others had to say before he had his say. In this instance there was no need for him to correct anything that he’d heard.

“If the Order troops in Galea have no gifted,” Jebra said, “then perhaps if some of those with the gift were to go there you could eliminate them. Perhaps you could save those poor people who are still alive, who have endured so much. It is not too late to at least save some of them.”

Richard thought that what she was really asking, but feared to speak aloud, was if this was only a minor force with no gifted among them, then why hadn’t some of those present done something to stop the slaughter she’d witnessed. Before Richard had ever left his woods of Hartland, he might very well have harbored the same vague sense of resentment and anger toward those who had not done anything to save them. Now he felt the torment of knowing how much more there was to it.

Nicci shook her head, dismissing the idea. “It’s not so feasible as it might seem. The gifted might be able to take out a large number of the enemy and for a time create havoc, but even this expeditionary force has sufficient numbers to withstand any attack by the gifted. Zedd, for example, could use wizard’s fire to mow down ranks of soldiers, but as he paused to conjure more the enemy would be sending wave upon wave of men at him. They might lose a lot of men, but they are not deterred by staggering casualties. They would keep coming. They would throw rank after rank of men into the conflagration. Despite how many would die, they would soon enough overwhelm even one as talented as the First Wizard. And then where would we be?

“Even something as simple as a band of archers could take down a gifted person.” She glanced at Richard. “All it takes is one arrow finding its mark, and a gifted person will die the same as any other.”

Zedd spread his hands in a gesture of frustration. “I’m afraid that Nicci is right. In the end, the Order would be in the same place with the same result, even if with fewer men. We, on the other hand, would be without those with the gift that we sent against them. They can replenish their troops with nearly endless reinforcements, but there will be no legions of gifted coming to our aid. As callous as it may seem, our only chance lies not with throwing our lives away in a futile battle that we know has no chance of success, but with being able to come up with something that has a real chance to work.”

Richard wished that he believed that there was some solution, some plan, that had a real chance to work. He didn’t think, though, that there was any chance that they could do anything other than prolong the end.

Jebra nodded, her glimmer of hope sparking out. The deep creases that lent a sagging look to her face along with the lasting web of wrinkles at the corners of her blue eyes made her look older than Richard suspected she really was. Her shoulders were slightly rounded, and her hands rough and callused from hard labor. Even though the men of the Order had not killed her, they had sapped the life out of her, leaving her forever scarred by what she had been through and what she’d been forced to witness. How many others were there, like her, alive but forever withered under the brutality of the occupying forces, hollow shells of their former selves, alive on the outside but lifeless inside?

Richard felt dizzy. He could hardly believe that Shota would bring Jebra all this way to convince him of how terrible the Order really was. He already knew the truth of their brutality, of the nature of their threat. He’d lived for nearly a year in the Old World under the repression of the Order. He had been there at the start of the revolt in Altur’Rang.

Jebra’s firsthand testimony, if anything, was only helping to convince him of what he already knew—that they didn’t stand a chance against Jagang and the Imperial Order forces. The entire D’Haran Empire would probably have been able to stop the unit that had descended upon Galea, but that was nothing compared with the main army of the Imperial Order.

Back when he’d first met Kahlan he’d fought hard to stop the threat to everyone brought by Darken Rahl. As difficult as it had been, Richard had been able to end that threat by eliminating Darken Rahl. He knew, though, that this threat was different. As much as he hated Jagang, Richard knew that he could not think of this in the same terms as the last battle. Even if he could somehow kill Jagang, that would not stop the menace of the Imperial Order. Their cause was monolithic, ideological, not driven by the ambitions of one individual. That was what made it all seem so hopeless.

Shota’s vision—what she foresaw in the flow of time as the world’s hopeless future if they failed to do something to stop the Imperial Order—certainly didn’t seem to Richard to have required any great talent or special sight. He didn’t need to be a prophet to see how dire a threat the Order was. If not stopped, they would rule the world. Jebra, in that sense, had told him nothing new, nothing that he didn’t already know.

Richard recognized all too well that, the way things stood, when the forces of the D’Haran Empire finally met Jagang’s army in the final battle, those brave men, who were all that stood in the Order’s way, were
all going to die. After that, there would be no opposition to the Imperial Order. They would rampage unchecked and in the end they would rule the world.

Shota was far from stupid, so she obviously knew all that, and had to know that he would know it as well.

So, he wondered, why was she really there?

Despite his dark mood over Jebra’s frightening account of what she had seen, Richard had to think that Shota very likely had some other reason for her visit.

Still, Jebra’s story had been difficult to listen to without it stirring not only his anguish, but his anger. Richard turned away and stared into the stilled water of the fountain. He felt the weight of gloom settling around his shoulders. What could he do about any of it? It felt as if this and all the other troubles pressing in around them were pushing Kahlan away from his thoughts, away from him.

At times she hardly even seemed real to him. He hated it whenever he had such a thought. Sometimes, when he remembered her wit, or the way she smiled so easily when she rested her wrists on his shoulders and locked her fingers together behind his neck and gazed at him, or her beautiful green eyes, or her soft laugh, or her touch, or the tight smile she gave no one but him, she seemed more like a phantom who existed solely in his imagination.

The very thought of Kahlan not being real sent a spike of tingling dread surging up through his insides. He had lived with that numbing fear for a long, dark period. It had been terrifying to be alone in his belief that she existed, terrifying to doubt his own sanity, until he had at last found the truth of the Chainfire spell and convinced the others that she was indeed real. Now, at least, he had their help.

Richard mentally shook himself. Kahlan was no phantom. He had to find a way to get her out of the clutches of Sister Ulicia and the other two Sisters of the Dark. It didn’t help, though, that the thought of Kahlan being a captive of such ruthless women caused him such anguish that he sometimes couldn’t bear to think about it, to think of what terrible things they might do to the woman who was his world, the woman he loved more than life itself, and yet he could not make his mind focus on anything else.

Despite what Shota believed he should do, Richard had to remember that, besides Kahlan being lost in the vortex of the Chainfire spell, there
were other ominous dangers, like the boxes of Orden being in play, and the damage left behind by the chimes. He couldn’t ignore everything else just because the witch woman came marching in to tell him what she thought he should do. It could even be that Shota’s true goal was some complex scheme, some hidden agenda, involving this other witch woman, Six. There was no telling what Shota was really up to.

Still, Richard had come to have great respect for her, as had Kahlan, even if he didn’t entirely trust her. While Shota often seemed to be an instigator of trouble it was not necessarily because she was deliberately trying to cause him grief; sometimes her intent was to help him and at other times she was simply the messenger of truth. And while she was always right in the things she revealed to him, those things almost always turned out to be true in ways Shota hadn’t predicted—or at least in ways she hadn’t revealed. As Zedd often said, a witch woman never told you something you wanted to know without also telling you something you didn’t want to know.

The first time he met her, Shota had said that Kahlan would touch him with her power and so he should kill her to prevent that from happening. As it turned out, Kahlan did use her Confessor’s touch on him, but that was how he had been able to trick Darken Rahl and defeat him. Shota had been right, but it had happened in a manner that turned out to be vastly different from the way she’d presented it. Even though she had been right, strictly speaking, if he had followed her advice Darken Rahl would have survived to unleash the power of Orden and rule them all, or the ones left alive.

In the back of his mind lurked the prediction Shota had made that if Richard married Kahlan she would bear a child that would be a monster. He and Kahlan had been wed. Surely that prediction would not turn out the way Shota had presented it either. Surely Kahlan would not give birth to a monster.

It was Zedd who finally spoke, bringing Richard out of his private thoughts. “What ever happened to Queen Cyrilla?”

The room was dead still for a time before Jebra answered. “It was as it had been in my vision. She was handed over to the lowest of the soldiers to use as they wished. They were eager to get at their prize. It went very badly for her. Her worst fears came to pass.”

Zedd cocked his head, apparently believing that there was more to the story. “So that was the last you saw of her?”

Jebra folded her hands before herself. “Not exactly. One day, as I was rushing to deliver a platter of freshly roasted beef, I came upon a raucous group of men playing a game that the Imperial Order troops were very fond of watching. There were two teams with the gathered men shouting and yelling them on. The men were all betting on which team would win. I don’t know what the game was—”