Naked Empire

At the statue, Richard swiped the dusting of snow off the ledge, revealing again the words carved in High D'Haran. Kahlan watched his eyes moving along the line of words, reading them to himself. He had a kind of excitement in his movements that told her he was racing after an important quarry.

For the moment, she could also see that his headache was gone. She couldn't understand the way it ebbed from time to time, but she was relieved to see strength in the way he moved. Hands spread on the stone, leaning on his arms, he looked up from the words. Without the headache, there was a vibrant clarity in his gray eyes.

"Part of this story has been puzzling," he said. "I understand now. It doesn't say, 'Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond… for beyond is evil: those who cannot see. »

Jennsen's nose wrinkled. "It doesn't? You mean it wasn't meant to be about these pristinely ungifted people?"

"Oh, it was about them, all right, but not in that respect." Richard tapped a finger to the carved words. "It doesn't say 'for beyond is evil:

those who cannot see, but something profoundly different. It says, 'Fear any breach of this seal to the empire beyond. . for beyond are those who cannot see evil. »

Kahlan's brow drew down."… those who cannot see evil."

Richard lifted his bandaged arm up toward the figure towering over them. "That's what Kaja-Rang feared most-not those who couldn't see magic, but those who could not see evil. That's his warning to the world." He aimed a thumb back over his shoulder, indicating the men behind them. "That's what this is all about."

Kahlan was taken aback, and a little perplexed. "Do you think it might be that because these people can't see magic they also can't recognize evil," she asked, "or that because of the way they're different they simply don't have the ability to conceive of evil, in much the same way they can't conceive of objective magic as having nothing to do with mysticism?"

"That might in part be what Kaja-Rang thought," Richard said. "But I don't."

"Are you so sure?" Jennsen asked.

"Yes."

Before Kahlan could make him explain, Richard turned to the men. "Here, in stone, Kaja-Rang left a warning for the world. Kaja-Rang's warning is about those who cannot see evil. Your ancestors were banished from the New World because they were pristinely ungifted. But this man, this powerful wizard, Kaja-Rang, feared them for something else: their ideas. He feared them because they refused to see evil. That's what made your ancestors so dangerous to the people of the Old World."

"How could that be?" a man asked.

"Thrown together and banished to a strange place, the Old World, your ancestors must have clung desperately to one another. They were so afraid of rejection, of banishment, that they avoided rejecting one of their own. It developed into a strong belief that no matter what, they should try not to condemn anyone. For this reason, they rejected the concept of evil for fear they would have to judge someone. Judging someone as evil meant they would have to face the problem of removing them from their midst.

"In their flight from reality, they justified their practices by settling on the fanciful notion that nothing is real and so no one can know the nature of reality. That way, they wouldn't have to admit that someone was evil. Better to deny the existence of evil than have to eliminate the evildoer in their midst. Better to turn a blind eye to the problem, ignore it, and hope it went away.

"If they admitted the reality of evil, then eliminating the evildoer was the only proper action, so, by extension, since they had been banished, they thought that they must have been banished because they were evil. Their solution was to simply discard the entire concept of evil. An entire belief structure developed around this core.

"Kaja-Rang may have thought that because they were pristinely un-gifted and couldn't see magic, they also couldn't see evil, but what he feared was the infection of their beliefs spreading to others. Thinking requires effort; these people offered beliefs that needed no thought, but merely adopting some noble-sounding phrases. It was, in fact, an arrogant dismissal of the power of man's mind-an illusion of wisdom that spurned the requirement of any authentic effort to understand the world around them or the nuisance of validation. Such simplistic solutions, such as unconditionally rejecting all violence, are especially seductive to the undeveloped minds of the young, many of whom would have eagerly adopted such disordered reasoning as a talisman of enlightenment.

"When they began fanatically espousing these empty tenets to others, it probably set off the alarm for Kaja-Rang.