Naked Empire

"You see," he said, "only some people have magic-are gifted, as it's called. But all people are born with at least a very tiny spark of the gift, even though they can't manipulate magic. Until just recently, everyone thought of these people as ungifted. You see? The gifted, like wizards and sorceresses, can manipulate magic, and the rest of the people can't, so they were believed to be ungifted.

"But it turns out that this isn't accurate, since there is an infinitesimal spark of the gift in everyone born. This tiny spark of the gift is actually what allows people to interact with the magic in the world around them, that is, with things and creatures that have magical properties, and with people who are gifted in a more comprehensive sense-those who do have the ability to manipulate magic."

"Some people in Bandakar have magic, too," a man said. "True magic.

Only those who have never seen-"

"No," Richard said, cutting him off. He didn't want them losing track of his account. "Owen told me about what you people believe is magic. That's not magic, that's mysticism. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about real magic that produces real results in the real world. Forget what you've been taught about magic, about how faith supposedly creates what you believe in and that is real magic. It's not real. It's just the fanciful illusion of magic in people's imaginations."

"But it is real," someone said in a respectful but firm voice. "More real than what you see and feel."

Richard turned a harsh look on the men. "If it's so real, then why did you have to use a known poison on me that was mixed by a man who had worked his whole life with herbs? Because you know what's real, that's why; when it was vital to your self-interest, to your lives, you resorted to dealing in reality, to what you know really works."

Richard pointed back at Kahlan. "The Mother Confessor has real magic.

It's no fanciful curse put on someone and when they die ten years later people believe the curse was the cause. She has real magic that is in elemental ways linked to death, so it affects even you. She can touch someone, with this real magic, and in an instant they will be dead. Not ten years from now-right now, on the spot."

Richard stood resolutely in front of the men, gazing from eye to eye.

"If someone doesn't believe that is real magic, then let's have a test. Let them perform their faith-based magic and put a spell on me-to kill me right here and now. After they've done that, then they will come forward and be touched by the Mother Confessor's very real, lethal power. Then everyone else will be able to see the results and judge for themselves." He looked from face to face. "Anyone willing to take up the test? Any magicians among all you ungifted people willing to try it?"

When the men remained silent, no one moving, Richard went on.

"So, it would seem that you men do have some understanding of what's real and what isn't. Keep that in mind. Learn from it.

"Now, I told you how the Lord Rahl always bore a son with magic so he could pass on the rule of D'Hara and his gifted ability in order to make the bond work. But, as I said, the bond that Alric Rahl created may have had an unintended consequence.

"Only later was it discovered that the Lord Rahl, possibly as a means of balance, also sometimes produced offspring that were entirely without any magic-not just ungifted in the way most people are, but unlike any people ever born before: they were pristinely ungifted. These pristinely ungifted people had absolutely no spark of the gift whatsoever.

"Because of that, because they were pristinely ungifted, they were unable to interact with the real magic in the world. They were unable to be touched by magic at all. For them, magic might as well not exist because they were not born with the ability to see it or to interact with it. You might say they were like a bird that could not fly. They looked like a bird, they had feathers, they ate bugs, but they couldn't fly.

"Back then in that time, three thousand years ago, after the bond had been created to protect people from dream walkers in the war, the wizards finally succeeded in placing a barrier between the Old and the New World.

Because those in the Old World could no longer come to the New World to wage war, the great war ended. Peace finally came.

"The people of the New World discovered, though, that they had a problem. These pristinely ungifted offspring of the Lord Rahl passed this trait on to their children. Every offspring of a marriage with at least one of these pristinely ungifted partners bears pristinely ungifted children-always, every time. As these offspring married and had children and then grandchildren and then great-grandchildren, as there were more and more of them, that pristinely ungifted trait began spreading throughout the population.

"People, at the time, were frightened because they depended on magic.