The Third Kingdom

Richard took a deep breath. “Well, the accepted sense is that living people have souls. But what does that mean? How does it make us human? In some part, having a soul means having the full intellectual ability to reason. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think so. What does reasoning have to do with it?”

“The ability to reason is what gives us our capacity to have empathy for others, to value life itself. Our ability to judge right from wrong, to value all life, is only possible through our ability to reason. Reason is what powers morality.

“Naja says that these half people have no empathy and she also makes the specific point that they don’t have the ability to reason fully. I think that she wanted us to see that the two are connected. That part of them that enabled them to reason out their larger self-interest has been destroyed through Subtractive Magic. That ability to reason was the source of their empathy, their humanity.

“She says that because of the way their minds have been reduced, with what is left of them they can only reason in part, the way a predator reasons in order to hunt.

“Without the ability to reason in that broader sense, they are not the same as us. They are not human. They have no context for their lives, no transcending aspirations, no understanding or feelings for others. They make weapons, they hunt, they kill, they eat, they reproduce. They have human form, but that’s all.”

Samantha gave him a crooked look. “I can understand Sulachan wishing to have this mindless army, but do you think that it’s really even possible to do such a thing?”

“Apparently,” Richard said as he scanned the symbols, translating the gist of it for her. “In this line here, Naja says that the Grace and so their very being was ripped asunder. After that, they invested them with magic that is similar to that used to reanimate the dead. In this way the emperor’s makers were able to create a race of half people to serve him.

“What’s more, because of what was done with Subtractive Magic to the husk of their living bodies, half people age very slowly, almost imperceptibly.”

Samantha, looking more than a little skeptical, folded her arms. “Magic can do a lot of things, but it can’t slow people from aging. If it could, the gifted would all do that to keep themselves from getting old.”

“It can be done,” Richard said. “I’ve seen it myself at the Palace of the Prophets. Ancient spells altered time there. The people living inside that spell seemed to age slowly compared to the rest of us. It was originally done when the palace was built in order to give the sorceresses there enough time to complete the task of training young wizards.

“I know people who once lived there who are hundreds of years old—at least by our measurement of time outside that spell, if not theirs from within it. I even know an ancestor of mine, Nathan Rahl, who lived there most of his life and is close to a thousand years old.”

“A thousand years.…” Samantha stared for a long moment, finally shaking her head. “I wish I could see such wonders that must exist out beyond the Dark Lands. I’ve always known that I’m doomed to stay here in this little isolated place, like all my ancestors, never to see the world beyond. But I’ve dreamed of seeing such wonders.”

“I don’t know if I would call them ‘wonders.’ Oftentimes, like with what we’re facing here, it’s nothing more than a whole lot of trouble.”

After considering his words a moment she finally returned to the issue at hand. “But, how was it possible to keep these half people from aging? They’re not living inside a spell like you described.”

“It necessarily involves Subtractive Magic—”

“But only those ancient wizards back when they created these half people could wield Subtractive Magic, right? No one now has the ability to use Subtractive Magic.”

“Even today there are a very few who can still call upon that side of the gift.” He didn’t go into the fact that he was one of those—at least when his gift was working. Her eyes were wide again, so he simply continued with what he had been explaining.

“So, in this case, since Subtractive Magic had been used to bring about such changes in the Grace, that would inescapably involve the underworld and in that way their aging was slowed.”

“The underworld? Why would involving the underworld slow their aging?”

“Because our lives have limits—we are born, we live, and then we die—but we’re dead forever, right?”

“Right,” she conceded with a confused nod. “So?”

“So, we live for a finite time, but since death is forever there is no way to measure it. Life gives dimension to time.”

“But our spirits begin their time in the underworld when we die, much the same as we begin our lives when we are born into the world of life.”