Blood of the Fold

When pressed, they quoted rumor as if it were fact seen with their own eyes, rumor of how the Lord Rahl had children as slaves in the palace, how he took countless young women to his bed, leaving them senseless from the experience to wander the streets naked. They claimed to know young women and girls whom he had gotten pregnant, and furthermore knew people who had actually seen the miscarriages of some of these poor victims of his rape, and they had been hideous, misshapen freaks, the spawn of his evil seed. They spat at him for the crimes he committed against helpless people.

He asked them how they could be so frank with him if he were such a monster. They said that they knew he wouldn't do them harm in the open, that they had heard how he pretended to be compassionate in public so as to fool people, so they knew he would do nothing to them in front of the crowds, and they would soon have their womenfolk away from his evil clutches.

The more Richard tried to put to rest the baffling beliefs, the more tenaciously the people clung to them. They said they had heard these things from too many others for it to be anything but true. Such common knowledge could not be false, they said, as it would be impossible to fool so many people. They were passionate in their belief and their fear, and would hear no arguments of logic. They simply wanted to be left alone to run to the protection they had heard was offered by the Imperial Order.

Their passion was going to bring them to true ruin. He wondered if this could be how violation of the Third Rule hurt people. He didn't know if it was a solid enough example. It seemed tangled with the First Rule: People would believe any lie, either because they wanted it to be true, or because they feared it was. It seemed in could be several rules mixed together, violated in tandem, and he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

And then Richard recalled the day back home in Westland when Mrs. Rencliff, who could not swim, had wrenched her arms from the men trying to hold her back, refusing to wait for the rowboat, and had leapt into a Mood swollen river after her boy who had fallen in. The men rushed up a few minutes later with the rowboat and saved the boy's life. Chad Rencliff grew up without a mother; they never found her body.

Richard's skin prickled as if ice had touched it. He understood. Wizard's Third Rule: Passion rules reason.

It was a distressing hour of detailing the way people's passion instead of reason brought them to harm, and worse, wondering how magic could add ruin to the equation, as he knew it would, before Ulic finally returned with the general.

General Reibisch clapped a fist to his heart as he entered the room. "Lord Rahl, Ulic said you were in a hurry to see me."

Richard gripped the bearded man's dark uniform. "How long will it take you to get men ready to leave on a search?"

"Lord Rahl, they're D'Harans. D'Haran soldiers are always ready to leave on a moment's notice."

"Good. You know my bride-to-be, Queen Kahlan Amnell?"

General Reibisch nodded. "Yes. The Mother Confessor."

Richard winced. "Yes, the Mother Confessor. She's on her way here from the southwest. She's past due, and there may be trouble. She had a spell over her to protect her identity as the Mother Confessor, so that her enemies couldn't hunt her. Somehow, the spell has been removed. It might be nothing, but it could be that it means trouble. For sure, her enemies will now know of her."

The man scratched his rust-colored beard. His grayish green eyes came up at last. "I see. What would you like me to do?"

"We have close to two hundred thousand men in Aydindril, with another hundred thousand scattered all around the perimeter of the city. I don't know exactly where she is, except that she's supposed to be to the southwest and on her way here. We have to protect her.

“I want you to get a force together, half the troops in the city, a hundred thousand at least, to go out after her."

The general stroked his scar as he heaved a sigh. "That's a lot of men, Lord Rahl. Do you think we need to take that many from the city?"

Richard paced between the desk and the general. "I don't know exactly where she is. If we take too few we could miss her by fifty miles and wander off without ever making contact. With that many men we can fan out as we go, cast a wide net, covering all the roads and trails so we don't miss her."

"You will be going with us, then?"

Richard desperately wanted to go find Kahlan and Zedd. He glanced to Berdine sitting behind the desk as she worked, and thought about the words of warning from a three-thousand-old wizard. Wizard's Third Rule: Passion rules reason.

Berdine needed his help to translate the journal. He was already learning important things about the last war, and the towers, and the dream walkers. A dream walker again walked the world.