With a large knife, the man with his feet up on the table carved a long strip of meat from a bone. He tossed the bone over his shoulder to a snarling pack of dogs behind him. He tore the strip of meat in half with his teeth and pointed with the knife to his right, to the young man in plain robes, as he added a swig from a mug to the meat already in his mouth. He spoke around it all.
"Wizard Slagle here told me he thought he smelled a Confessor." He peered up with bloodshot eyes. "And where is your wizard, Confessor? Huh?" Everyone at the table laughed with him. Ale ran down his thick, blond beard. "Bring anything to drink, Confessor? We're nearly out. No? Well, not to mind." With the knife, he pointed over to the Keltish commander. "Karsh here tells me there's a nice city a week or so down the mountains, and they're bound to have some ale for us thirsty boys, after they welcome us to their town and swear allegiance."
Kahlan's eyes slid to the wizard. It was for him she had come. She cooly calculated whether or not she could make the jump from the horse to the wizard and touch him with her power before she was caught by that big knife. The man wielding the knife didn't look to be able to react too quickly. Still, she judged it to be poor odds. She was willing to give her life to the task, but only if she could be reasonably sure of success.
But it was for him she had come. The wizard was this army's eyes. He saw things before they could, and things they couldn't see, like her. And D'Harans feared things magic, and spirits. A wizard was their defense against magic and those spirits.
Her gaze moved from the wizard's deep set eyes and drunken, leering smirk to what he was doing with his hands. He was whittling. Before him on the table was as pile of shavings. She remembered the piles of wood shavings in the Palace at Ebinissia, outside the girls' rooms.
The wizard waggled the stick he had whittled. For the first time, she noticed what it was. It was a larger than life phallus. His smirk grew.
The man with the knife pointed it to the wizard. "Slagle's got something for you, Confessor. Been working on it for two hours, since he realized you were coming for a visit." He made a feeble attempt to hold back his laughter, but it came in fits through his restraint and he finally gave in to it.
Two hours. They had just told her the limits of this wizard's power. She had left the Galeans four hours ago, but nearly an hour of that had been spent at her task up on the ridges. That meant the the Galean boys weren't yet close enough for the wizard to know of them, but were only concealed from discovery by a dangerously thin margin. Any closer, and the wizard would know of them. Long before they could bring any surprise to bear.
She waited for the D'Haran man's laughter to sputter out before she spoke. "You have me at a disadvantage."
"Not yet! But I will!" The men roared and hooted again.
With every beat of her heart, she became more calm. She pushed her hood back. She wore her Confessor's face. "What is your name, soldier?"
"Soldier!" He lurched forward and stuck the knife in the table. "I'm no soldier. I'm General Riggs. I'm Supreme Commander of all our troops. All our men, old and new, answer to me."
"And in who's name are you fighting, General Riggs?"
He swept his hand around. "Why, the Imperial Order is fighting a war on behalf of those who join us. A war against all the oppressors. Against all who fight us. Those who don't join us are against us, and will be crushed. We fight to bring order.
"Under the Imperial Order, all who join us will find protection, and in turn they will help protect all. All the lands will join with us, or they will be swept aside. It is a new order for which we struggle. The Imperial Order. They command all the lands, and I command them."
Kahlan frowned, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. "I am the Mother Confessor, and I command the Midlands, not you."
"Mother Confessor!" He clapped the wizard on the back. "You didn't tell me she was the Mother Confessor! Well, you don't look like any mother I've seen. But after tonight, you'll be a mother sure enough. You have my word on that!" He roared with laughter.
"Darken Rahl is dead." That brought the laughter to an end. "The new Lord Rahl has declared the war ended and called all the D'Haran troops home."
General Riggs rose to his feet. "Darken Rahl was a man of limited foresight, a man too much concerned with his ancient magic and too little concerned with order. He was too preoccupied with his own quests, his old religions. Magic, until it is eradicated, is a tool of men, not a master of them.
"Darken Rahl failed to use the opportunity he had. We will not fail. Darken Rahl himself, in the underworld, knows this, and repents. He is allied to our struggle, now. The good spirits have declared it! We no longer bow to the house of Rahl, but they, as all houses, districts, and kingdoms, to us. The new Lord Rahl will join us, too, or we will crush him and any heathen dogs who follow him. We will crush all the heathen dogs!"
"In other words, General, you fight for no one other than yourself. Your purpose is simply to murder people."
"I do not fight for myself! This is a larger purpose than one man. We offer all the opportunity to join with us. If they don't join with us, it is because they are aligned with our enemies, and we must kill them!" He threw his hands up. "It's useless trying to explain such matters of state and canon to a woman. Women have no intellect for rule."
"Men have no exclusive talent to rule, General."
"It is profanity for men to bow down to a woman for protection! Right men concern themselves only with getting under a woman's skirts, not with hiding behind them! Women rule from their nipples, offering only their sympathetic pap. Men rule from their fist. They make and enforce the law. They provide and protect.
"Every king and patrician will be offered the chance to join with us, to bring his land and his people under our protection. All queens will be offered the chance to ply their wares in a brothel, or perhaps to be the humble wives of an indentured farmer, but either way make a proper use of themselves."
He swept his mug up from the table and took a few gulps. "Can't you see, woman? Are you that stupid, even for a woman? What has your Midland alliance accomplished under the rule of women?
"Accomplished? The alliance is to accomplish nothing but to let all the lands live in peace, to leave their neighbors lands to their neighbors, and know that their own is safe from covetous hands, and that all will stand to protect each, even the weak and defenseless, so none will stand alone and naked."
He smiled in triumph as he looked to his comrades. "Truly spoken from the teat!"
He gestured with disgust. "You provide no leadership, no law; each land proscribes and pronounces as they see fit. What in one place is a crime, in another is virtue. Your alliance shies from bringing order to all. You are nothing but fragmented tribes, each jealously guarding what is his, with no thought to the union other that fits their own greed, and in so doing lets all be vincible."
"You are wrong, that is exactly what the Central Council in Aydindril is for, to bring all lands together for the common defense. The common defense against murderers like you. It is not a feeble union, as you seem to think, but one with teeth."
"A noble ideal. One, in fact, which I share, but one you only give pap to. You bring them together only timidly, not under common canon." He held his hand out to her, closing it into a fist as he sneered at her. "In so doing, you leave all lands ripe for the squeezing. You are lost souls in search of true leadership and in desperate need of protection.
"As soon as the boundaries fell, you were ravaged by Darken Rahl, and he was only halfhearted about it, seeking only his magic! Had he let the Generals run as they would, there wouldn't be even a shell of this play alliance of yours left."
"And who is it we all need protection from?"
He stared of, whispering, almost to himself. "From the horde who will come."
"What horde?"
He looked up, as if he had just awakened. "The horde spoken of in the prophecies." He frowned at her as if she were hopelessly thick, and then held his hand out to
the wizard. "The good wizard here has counseled us on the prophecies. You are one who spent your life with wizards, and you never sought their knowledge?"
"Your eloquent claim to want join people in peace and law are high-minded words, General Riggs. But your atrocities in Ebinissia put the lie to them. For all time, Ebinissia will bear mute but irrefutable testimony to your true cause. You, and your Imperial Order, are the horde." Kahlan glowered to the wizard. "What is your part in this, wizard Slagle?"
He shrugged. "Why, to assist and facilitate the joining of all people under the rule of common law."
"Who's law?"
"The law of the victors." He smiled. "That would be us. The Imperial Order."
"You have responsibilities as a wizard. Those responsibilities are to serve, not to rule. You will report at once to Aydindril, to take your place in that service, or you will answer to me."
"You?" he said with a derisive sneer. "You demand good and decent men whimper and snivel before you, and at the same time you blindly let banelings have a free run of the land."
"Banelings?" She glowered at Riggs. "I suppose you would be foolish enough to seek council from the Blood of the Fold."
"They have already joined with us," General Riggs said, offhandedly. "Our cause is theirs, and theirs ours. They know how to expunge those who would serve the Keeper and thus our enemies. We will cleanse the land of all who serve the Keeper. Goodness must triumph."
"You mean your cause. It is you, who would rule."
"Are you blind, Confessor? I rule here, now, but this is not about me; it is about the future. I simply fill the post for now, furrow the field so it may produce. It is not I who is the focus.
"We offer everyone the chance to serve with us, and every man with me has taken that offer. Others have joined our troops in our battle. We are no longer D'Haran troops. They are no longer troops of their homeland. We are all the Imperial Order. Any of right mind can lead us. If I fall in our noble struggle, another will rise up to take my place, until all the lands are joined under united rule, and the Imperial Order can flower."
Either the man was too drunk to know what he was saying, or he was mad. She glanced about at the dancing, drunken, singing men at camp fires all about. Mad as the Bantak. Mad as the Jocopo.
"General Riggs." He had been muttering angrily under his breath, but stopped and looked up at her. "I am the Mother Confessor. Like it or not, I represent the Midlands. In the name of the Midlands I call upon you to to halt this war immediately and either return to D'Hara, or come to the Council with your grievances. You may petition to the Central Council with any dispute you have, and it will be heard, but you may not visit war upon my people. You will not like the consequence if you choose not to heed my orders."
He sneered up at her. "We make no compromises. We will annihilate all who don't join us. We fight to stop the killing, to stop the murdering, as the good spirits have called upon us to do. We fight for peace! Until we win peace, we will have war!"
She frowned. "Who told you this? Who told you that you must fight?"
He blinked at her. "It's self evident, you stupid bitch!"
"You cannot possibly be so stupid as to think the good spirits tell you to wage war. The good spirits do not act in such overt ways."
"Ah, well then, we have a disagreement. That is the purpose of war, is it not? To settle such matters? The good spirits know us to be in the right, else they would easily join against us. Our victory will prove they side with us or we could not win in our struggle. The Creator Himself wishes to see us triumph, and our victory will be proof of that."
The man was a lunatic. She redirected her attention to the Keltish commander. "Karsh..."
"General Karsh."
"You demean the rank, General. Why did you slaughter the people of Ebinissia?"
"Ebinissia was given the opportunity to join us, as will all be given the opportunity. Ebinissia chose to fight. We had to make an example of her heathen people, to show others what awaits them if they fail to join us in peace. It cost us nearly half our men, but it was a goal worth the cost. Even now, those lost are being replaced by others joining with us, and we will swell in rank to take in all the known lands."
"This, you call leadership? Extortion and murder?"
General Karsh slammed his mug down on the table. His eyes were fire. "We visit upon them what they visit upon our people! They raid our farms, our border towns. They kill Keltans as if we were bugs to be stepped on!
"Yet we offered them peace. It is they who chose to shun our mercy. They were offered a chance at peace, a chance to join us; they chose war. In that way, they chose to aid us; they have made an example for others of the folly of fighting us."
"And what have you done with Queen Cyrilla? Did you slaughter her, too, or is she back there in your whores' tents?"
They all laughed. "She would be," Riggs put in, "if we'd found her." Kahlan almost sighed aloud with relief.
She looked back to Karsh, who was taking another swig. "What has Prince Fyren to say of this?"
"Fyren's in Aydindril! I'm here!"
So, perhaps the Crown wasn't a part of this. Perhaps this was little more that a band of murdering outlaws who fancied themselves as more.
Kahlan knew Prince Fyren, knew him to be a reasonable man. Of the Keltish diplomats assigned to Aydindril, he was the one who had done the most to bring Kelton forward into the alliance of the Midlands through the Central Council. He cajoled and persuaded his mother, the Queen, to go the route of peace rather than conflict. Prince Fyren was a gentleman, in every sense of the word.
"Besides being a murderer, General Karsh, you are also a traitor to your own land and crown. To your own Queen."
He hammered his pewter mug down on the table. "I'm a patriot! A protector of my people!"
She leaned the slightest bit forward. "You are a treasonous bastard and an outlaw cutthroat without conscious. I leave to Prince Fyren the honor of condemning you to death. It will, of course, be a posthumous sentence."
Karsh pounded his fist. "The good spirits know of your treachery against the people of the Midlands! This proves their words true! They have told us we cannot be free as long as you live! They have called upon us to kill all those like you! All those who blaspheme! The good spirits will not abandon us in our struggle. We shall defeat all who do the Keeper's bidding."
"No real officer," she said, contemptuously, "would listen to the babbling of the Blood."
The wizard had made an angry looking ball of liquid fire, and was slowly juggling it back and forth between his hands while he watched her. The flames spit and hissed, dropping little sparks. General Riggs belched and then put his fists on the table as he leaned toward her.
"Enough talking. Get down here you little wench, so we can start the party. Us brave freedom fighters need a little fun."
General Karsh at last smiled. "And then tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, you will be beheaded. Our men, our people, will rejoice at your death. They will exult in our triumph over the Mother Confessor, the symbol of oppression by magic." His smile left as he turned red faced once more. "The people must see your punishment to know that good can prevail! To have hope! When we have your head, our people can rejoice!"
"Rejoice that all you brave freedom fighters are strong enough to kill a single woman?"
"No," General Riggs said. He appeared for the first time sober as he looked up at her. "You miss the true meaning of what we do. You fail to see its significance."
His voice lowered, his tone softened. "It is a new age we enter, Confessor. An age that has no place for your old religions. The line of Confessors and their wizards are at an end.
"There was a time, three thousand years ago, when nearly everyone was born with the gift. Magic held sway over all things. That magic was used to vie for power. Wizards abused their power. In their greed, they killed one another. They killed others who had the gift, and so fewer lived to pass it on. Over time, those with the gift were culled from t
he race of men.
"Yet those left still contested for rule, and further thinned the ranks of those born with the gift. The magic, the other creatures of magic who were their charges, such as you, have been steadily stripped of their protection and fount of magic. Today there are almost none born with the gift. Magic itself is dying with them. They have had their chance to rule, just as did Darken Rahl with his magic, and they have failed. Their time, the time of wizards, is past.
"Their protection of the twilight beings is at an end, and so the age of magic is at an end. The time of man is upon us now, and there is no place in that world for the ancient, dying religion you call magic. It is time for man to take his place as inheritor of the world. The Imperial Order is upon the world, now, and if it were not them, it would be man by another name. It is time for man to rule, for magic to die."
Kahlan felt a sudden hollowness. An unexpected tear ran down her cheek. A choking feeling of true panic clawed at her throat.
"Do you hear that, Slagle?" she whispered hoarsely. "You have magic. The ones you aid would put an end to you, too."
He tossed the little ball of fire to his other hand, the light of its flames dancing across his grim face. "It is as it must be. Magic, chaste or foul, is the Keeper's conduit to this world. When I have helped extinguish magic in all its forms, then I, too, must die. In that way, I will serve the people."
Riggs gazed up to her, almost sorrowfully, as he went on.
"Our people must see the last living embodiment of that religion die. You are its symbol, the last creature of magic created by wizards. With your death, they will be filled with hope for the future, and be emboldened to extinguish all the remaining pockets of filth and perversion that is magic.
"We are the plowshare. Those lands now infested with magic will be freed of its taint, and can be resettled by pious people. Then, at last, we shall all be free of your dogmas which have no part in the glory of the future of man."
He straightened, taking a drink from his mug. The harshness returned to his voice. "After we finish with you, then we will bring Galea to heel, and the rest the lands." He slammed the mug down. "Until complete and total victory is ours, we demand war!"