Naked Empire

Richard snatched up the bag with the girls' fingers and shook it at the men. "Every one of your loved ones back there is thinking of nothing but being saved. Can any of you even imagine their terror? I know what it's like to be tortured, to feel helpless and alone, to feel like you will never escape. In such a situation you want nothing more than for it to stop. You would do anything for it to stop."

"That's why we needed you," an older man said. "You must do this. You must rid us of the Order."

"I told you, I can't do it alone." With an arm wrapped in a bloody bandage, Richard gestured emphatically. "Surrendering your will to men of the Order who would do such things as this solves nothing. It simply adds more victims. The men of the Order are evil; you must fight back."

"But if only you would talk to those men like you talked to us, they would see their misguided ways. They would change, then."

"No, they won't. Life doesn't matter to them. They've made their choice to torture, rape, and kill. Our only chance to survive, our only chance to have a future is to destroy them."

"We can't harm another person," one of the men said.

"It's wrong to harm another," Owen agreed.

"It's always immoral to hurt, much less kill, another person," a middle-aged man said to the mumbled agreement of his fellows. "Those who do wrong are obviously in pain and need our understanding, not our hate. Hate will only invite hate. Violence will only begin a cycle of violence that never solves anything."

Richard felt as if the ground he had gained with these men was slipping away from him. He was about to run his fingers back through his hair when he saw that they were covered in blood. He dropped his arm and shifted his approach.

"You poisoned me to get me to kill these men. By that act, you've already proven that you accept the reality that it's sometimes necessary to kill in order to save innocent lives-that's why you wanted me. You can't hold a belief that it's wrong to harm another and at the same time coerce me to do it for you. That's simply killing by proxy."

"We need our freedom," one of them said. "We thought that maybe because of your command as a ruler you could convince these men, for fear of you, to leave us be."

"That's why you have to help me. You just said it-for fear of me.You must help me in this so that the threat, the fear, is credible. If they don't believe the threat is real then why would they leave your land?"

One of the others folded his arms. "We thought you might rid us of the Order without violence, without killing, but it is up to you to do such killing if that is your way. We cannot kill. From our very beginning, our ancestors have taught us that killing is wrong. You must do this."

Another, nodding his agreement, said, "It's your duty to help those who cannot bring themselves to do what you can do."

Duty. The polite name put to the chains of servitude.

Richard turned away, closing his eyes as he squeezed his temples between fingers and thumb. He'd thought that he was beginning to get through to these men. He'd thought he would be able to get them to think for themselves-in their own best interest-rather than to function spontaneously according to the rote dictates of their indoctrination.

He could hardly believe that after all he'd told them, these men would still rather have their loved ones endure torture and brutal murder than harm the men committing the crimes. By refusing to face the nature of reality, these men were willingly giving the good over to evil, life over to death.

He realized then that it was even more basic than that. In the most fundamental sense, they were willfully choosing to reject the reality of evil.

Deep inside him, every breath pulled a stitch of pain. He had to get the antidote. He was running out of time.

But that alone would not solve his problems; his gift was killing him just as surely as the poison. He felt so sick from the pounding pain of his headache that he thought he might throw up. Even the magic of his sword was failing him.

Richard feared the poison, but in a more central way, he feared the encroaching death from within, from his gift. The poison, as dangerous as it was, had a clearly defined cause and cure. With his gift, he felt lost.

Richard looked back into Kahlan's troubled eyes. He could see that she had no solution to offer. She stood in a weary pose, her arm hanging straight with the weight of the warning beacon that seemed to tell him only that he was dying, but offered no answers. Its whole reason for being was to call him to a proclaimed duty to help replace the boundary, as if his life was not his own, but belonged to anyone who laid claim to it by shackling him with a declaration of duty.

That concept-duty-was no less a poison than that which these men had given him… a call to sacrifice himself.

Richard took the small statue from Kahlan's hand and stared down at it.