Naked Empire

Rather than disagree, as Richard expected, Owen nodded. "Some believe, as you say, that over the time since we were protected and given our name, maybe the true words have been lost, or confused. Others believe that it has been passed down intact and must have important meaning. Some believe that the foretelling was meant to say only that a savior will come. Others think it means only that a destroyer will come."

"And what do you believe?" Richard asked.

Owen twiddled the button on his coat until Richard thought it might come off. "I believe that the foretelling is meant to say that a destroyer will come-and I believe that he is this man Nicholas, of the Order- and then that a savior will come and save us. I believe that man is you, Lord Rahl. Nicholas is our destroyer. You are our savior."

Richard knew from the book that prophecy didn't function with these people, with pillars of Creation.

"What your people think is a foretelling," Richard said, "is probably nothing more than an old adage that people have gotten mixed up."

Owen held his ground, if hesitantly. "We are taught that this is a foretelling. We are taught that those who named us told us this foretelling and that they wanted it passed down so all might know of it."

Richard sighed, the wind pulling out a long cloud of his breath. "So you think that up there is a statue of me, put there thousands of years ago by the ones who protected you behind the boundary? How would they know, long before I was born, what I would look like in order to make a statue of me?"

"The true reality knows everything that will be," Owen said by rote. He forced a half smile as he shrugged again. "After all, it made that little statue that you found look like you."

Unhappy to be reminded of that, Richard turned away from the man. The small figure had been made to look like him by magic tied to the boundary, and, possibly, to a dead wizard in the underworld.

Richard scanned the sky, the rocky slopes all around, the tree line. He didn't see any sign of life. The statue-they still couldn't quite make out what it was-sat distant up a treeless, rocky rise. It was yet quite a climb up to that rim of the pass, to that statue.

Richard was not going to like it if it did indeed turn out to be a statue of him beneath the gathering gloom.

He already didn't like it one bit that the second warning beacon was meant for him. It bound him to a responsibility, a duty, he neither wanted nor could accomplish.

He had no idea how to restore the seal on Bandakar. Zedd had once created boundaries that were probably similar to the one that had been down here in the Old World, but even Zedd had used constructed magic he had found in the Keep. Such constructed spells had been created by ancient wizards with vast power and knowledge of such things. Zedd had told him that there were no more such spells.

Richard certainly had no idea how to call forth a spell that could create such a boundary. More to the point, he didn't see how it would do any good even if he knew how. What had really been freed from Bandakar when the boundary failed was the trait of being born without any trace of the gift-that was why they had all been banished here in the first place. The Imperial Order was already breeding women from Bandakar in order to breed the gift out of mankind. There was no telling how far that trait had already spread. Breeding the women, as it sounded like they were doing, now, would gain them more children who were pristinely ungifted, children who would be indoctrinated in the teachings of the Order.

When they started using the men for breeding, the number of such children would vastly increase. A woman could have a child every year. In the same time, a man could sire a great number of children bearing his pristinely ungifted trait.

Despite the Order's creed of self-sacrifice, they had not yet, it would seem, been willing to sacrifice their women to such an undertaking. Raping the women in Bandakar and proclaiming it for the good of mankind was fine with the men of the Order. For the men ruling the Imperial Order to give over their own women to be bred, however, was quite another matter.

Richard had no doubt that they eventually would start using their own women to this purpose, but that would come later. In the meantime, the Order would probably soon start using all the women captured and held as slaves for this purpose, breeding them to men from Bandakar. The Order's conquest of the New World would provide them with plenty more women for breeding stock.

Whereas in ancient times those in the New World tried to limit the trait from spreading in man, the Imperial Order would do whatever they could to accelerate it.

"Richard," Kahlan asked in a low voice, so the others farther back in the trees wouldn't hear, "what do you think it means that the second warning beacon, the one for you, is turning black like the night stone? Do you think it means to show you the time you have left to get the antidote?"