Naked Empire

Friedrich leaned in. "But Lord Rahl, that would mean that if someone was banished from the Bandakaran Empire, when they emerged from that boundary they would find themselves trapped between the walls of these two boundaries out here, and there wasn't much room between them. A person would have nowhere to go but…"

Friedrich covered his mouth as he turned west, looking off into the gloom.

"The Pillars of Creation," Richard finished with quiet finality.

"But, but," Jennsen stammered, "are you saying that someone made it that way? Made these two boundaries deliberately to force anyone who was sent out of the Bandakaran Empire to go into that place-the Pillars of Creation? Why?"

Richard looked into her eyes for a long moment. "To kill them."

Jennsen swallowed. "You mean, whoever banished these people wanted anyone they in turn sent out, anyone they exiled, to die?"

"Yes," Richard said.

Kahlan pulled her cloak tighter around herself. It had been hot for so long she could hardly believe that the weather had so suddenly turned cold.

Richard swiped a lock of wet hair back off his forehead as he went on.

"From what Adie told me once, boundaries have to have a pass to create balance on both sides, to equalize the life on both sides. I suspect that those down here in the Old World who banished these people wanted to give them a way to get rid of criminals and so told the people about the existence of the pass. But they didn't want such people to be loosed on the rest of the world. Criminals or not, they were ungifted. They couldn't be allowed to run free."

Kahlan immediately saw the problem with his theory. "But all three boundaries would have had to have a pass," she said. "Even if the other two passes, in the remaining two boundaries, were secret, that still left the possibility that anyone exiled and sent through the notch might find one of them and so not try to escape through the Pillars of Creation where they would die. That left the chance that they might still escape into the Old World."

"If there really were three boundaries, such might be the case,"

Richard said. "But I don't think there were three. I think there really was only one."

"Now you're not making any sense," Cara complained. "You said there was the one going north and south blocking the pass, and then there were these two parallel ones out here, going east and west, to funnel anyone who came out of the empire through that first boundary, toward the Pillars of Creation where they would die."

Kahlan had to agree. It seemed that there might be a chance for someone to escape through one of the other two.

"I don't think there were three boundaries," Richard repeated. "I think there was only one. That one boundary wasn't straight-it was bent in half."

He held two fingers up, side by side. "The bottom of the bend went across the pass." He pointed at the web between the two fingers. "The two legs extended out here, parallel, going off to where they ended at the Pillars."

Jennsen could only ask "Why?"

"It seems to me, by how elaborate the whole design was, that the ones who sealed those people in wanted to give them a way to rid themselves of dangerous people, possibly knowing from what they had learned of their beliefs that they would balk at executing anyone. When these people were banished here to the Old World, they may have already had at least the core of the same beliefs they hold now. Those beliefs leave them completely vulnerable to those who are evil. Protecting their way of life, without executing criminals, meant they had to cast such people out of their community or be destroyed by them.

"The banishment away from D'Hara and the New World, across the barrier into the Old World, must have terrified them. They stuck together as a means of survival, a common bond.

"Those down here in the Old World who put them behind that boundary must have used those people's fear of persecution to convince them that the boundary was meant to protect them, to keep others from harming them. They must have convinced those people that, since they were special, they needed such protection. That, along with their well-established need to stick together, had to have reinforced in them a terrible fear of being put out of their protected place. Banishment had a special terror to those people.

"They must have felt the anguish of being rejected by the rest of the peoples of the world because they were ungifted, but, together as they were, they also felt safe behind the boundary.

"Now that the seal is off, we have big problems."

Jennsen folded her arms. "Now that there's more than one of us- more than one snowflake-you're having worries about a snowstorm?"

Richard fixed her with a reproachful look. "Why do you think the Order came in and took some of their people?"

"Apparently," Jennsen said, "to breed more children like them. To breed precious magic out of the race of man."

Richard ignored the heat in her words. "No, I mean why would they take men?"