Naked Empire

"Those few of us who were left in the hills hid, living off the nuts, fruits, and berries we could find or the food we snuck back and stole. We slowly gathered together supplies to see us through. I told the other men with me that we should find out what the Order was doing with our people they had taken away. Since the men of the Order didn't know us, we could sometimes mingle in with people working the fields or tending to animals and sneak back into our town without the Order knowing who we were-without knowing that we were men from the hills. Over the next months, we followed and watched the men of the Order.

"The children had been sent away, but the men of the Order had taken all the women to a place they built-an encampment, they called it-that they fortified against attack."

Owen put his face in his hands again as he spoke through sobs. "They were using our women as breeding stock. They sought to have them bear children-as many children as they could birth-children of their soldiers.

Some women were already pregnant. Most of those who weren't already pregnant became pregnant. Over the next year and a half, many children were born.

They were nursed for a time, and then they were all sent away as their mothers were gotten pregnant again.

"I don't know where these children were taken-somewhere beyond our empire. The men who had been taken from the towns were also taken away beyond our empire.

"The men of the Order did not watch their captives well, since our people shunned violence, so a couple of men escaped and ran to the hills, where they found us. They told us that the Order had taken them to see the women, and told them that if they did not do as they were told, if they did not follow all the orders they were given, then all these women before them would die-that they would be skinned alive. These men who escaped did not know where they were to be taken, or what it was they were to do, only that if they did not follow the instructions given them, then they would be the cause of the violence to our women.

"After a year and a half of hiding, of meeting with others, we learned that the Order had spread to other places in our empire, taken other towns and cities. The Wise One and the speakers went into hiding. We discovered that some towns and cities had invited the Order to come in, to be among them, in an attempt to appease them and keep them from doing harm.

"No matter how hard our people tried, their concessions failed to placate the belligerence of the men of the Order. We could not understand why this was true.

"In some of the largest cities, though, it was different. The people there had listened to the speakers of the Order and had come to believe that the cause of the Imperial Order was the same as our cause-to bring an end to abuse and injustice. The Order convinced these people that they abhorred violence, that they had been enlightened as were our people, but they had to turn to violence to defeat those who would oppress us all. They said that they were champions of our people's cause of enlightenment. The people there rejoiced that they were at last in the hands of saviors who would spread our words of enlightenment to the savages who did not yet live by peace."

Richard, a thunderstorm building, could hold his tongue no longer. "And even after all the brutality, these people believed the words of the Imperial Order?"

Owen spread his hands. "The people in those places were swayed by the words of the Order-that they were fighting for the same ideals as we lived by. They told our people in those cities that they had only acted as they did because my town and some of the other places like it had sided with the savages from the north-with the D'Haran Empire.

"I had heard this name before-the D'Haran Empire. During the year and a half that I lived in the hills with the other men, I sometimes traveled out of our land, out into the surrounding places, to see what I could discover that might help us to cast the Imperial Order out of Bandakar.

While I was out of my land, I went to some of the cities in the Old World, as I learned it was called. In one place, Altur'Rang, I heard whispers of a great man from the north, from the D'Haran Empire, who brought freedom.

"Other of my men also went out to other places. When we returned, we all told each other what we had seen, what we had heard. All those who came back told of the same thing, told of hearing of one called Lord Rahl, and his wife, the Mother Confessor, who fought the Imperial Order.

"Then, we learned where the Wise One was being kept safe, as were most of our greatest speakers. It was in our greatest city, a place where the Order had not yet come. The Order was busy with other places and so they were in no hurry. My people were going nowhere-they had nowhere to go.