Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind
“So, do you know where Richard is, now?” Kahlan asked.
“At work, I’m sure. He usually comes home about now—unless he has to work at night, too.”
Kahlan briefly scanned the room. “What about Nicci?”
“I don’t know. She may have gone to buy bread or something. It’s a little funny—she’s usually home long before now. She almost always has dinner ready for Richard.”
Kahlan’s gaze drifted through the darkening room, from table, to basin, to cupboard. She would hate to leave, only to have him show up a minute after she left. Kamil thought it was odd that Nicci wasn’t home. That they were both gone was troubling.
“Where does he work?” Kahlan asked.
“At the site.”
“Site? What site?”
Kamil gestured into the distance. “Out at the emperor’s new palace they’re building. Tomorrow’s the big dedication.”
“The new palace is done?”
“Oh, no. It’s years and years from being done. It’s only started, really. But they are going to dedicate it to the Creator, now. A lot of people have come to Altur’Rang for the ceremony.”
“Richard is a laborer helping build the palace?”
Kamil nodded. “He’s a carver. At least, he is now. He used to work at Ishaq’s transport company, but then he got arrested—”
Kahlan seized him by the shirt. “He was arrested? They…tortured him?”
Kamil’s eyes turned away from her frantic expression.
“I gave Nicci my money so she could get in to see him. She and Ishaq and Victor the blacksmith got him out. He was hurt bad. When he got better, the officials made him take a job carving.”
Kamil’s words spun through her head. The ones that floated above all the rest were that Richard had recovered.
“He carves statues, now?”
Kamil nodded again. “He carves people in stone to decorate the walls of the palace. He helps me with my own carvings. I can show you, out back.”
Wonder of wonders. Richard carving. But all the carvings they had seen in the Old World were grotesque. Richard would not like to carve such ugliness. Obviously, he had no choice.
“Maybe later.” Kahlan rubbed her fingers across her brow as she considered what to do. “Can you take me there, now? To the site where Richard works?”
“Yes, if you’d like. But don’t you want to wait to see if he comes home, first? He may be home soon.”
“You said he works at night, sometimes.”
“For the last few months, he worked at night a lot. He’s carving some special statue for them.” Kamil’s face brightened. “He told me to go tomorrow to see it. With the dedication tomorrow, it may be he’s still finishing it. I’ve never seen where he works, but Victor, the blacksmith, may know.”
“We should go see this blacksmith, then.”
Kamil scratched his head again as his expression turned to disappointment. “But the blacksmith will be gone for the night.”
“Is there anyone else out there, now?”
“There may be a lot of people there. Crowds go out there to see the place—I’ve gone out there myself—and tonight there may be more than usual, because of tomorrow’s ceremony.”
That might be just what they needed. They wouldn’t look so out of place searching the area for Richard if there were crowds out there. It would give them an excuse to look around.
“We’ll give him an hour,” Kahlan said. “If he doesn’t return by then, then it’s most likely because he’s working. If he doesn’t come back, we’ll have to go out there and look for him.”
“What if Nicci shows up?” Cara asked.
Kamil waved his hand to dismiss their concern. “I’ll go out on the front steps and watch for Nicci. You two can wait in here, where no one will see you. I’ll come warn you if I see Nicci coming up the street. I can always take you out the back way if I see her returning home.”
Kahlan laid a hand over his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“That sounds good to me, Kamil. We’ll wait in here.”
Kamil hurried out to his guard post. Kahlan glanced around the tidy room.
“Why don’t you get some sleep,” Cara said. “I’ll stand guard. You stood guard last.”
Kahlan was exhausted. She glanced down at the sleeping pallet closest to Richard’s things, then nodded. She lay down on his bed. The room was getting dark. Just being where he slept was a comfort. Being so close, but so far, she couldn’t fall asleep.
Nicci’s heart sank when she saw that Richard wasn’t in their room. Kamil was nowhere to be found. She had felt so good out at the site, watching all the people come to see Richard’s statue. Throngs of people had come to see it and had been uplifted.
Some had been angered by it. She, of all people, understood that. Still, Nicci could hardly believe the hateful reaction of some people to such beauty. Some people hated life. She understood that, too. There were those who refused to see—who didn’t want to see.
Other people, though, had a reaction much like hers.
It had all come clear for her. For the first time in her life, life made sense. Richard had tried to tell her, but she hadn’t listened. She had heard the truth before, too, but others—her mother, Brother Narev, the Order—had shouted it down, and shamed her out of listening.
Her mother had trained her well, and from the first day she had seen Brother Narev, Nicci had been a soldier in the Order’s army.
When she saw the statue, she saw at last the truth she had always refused to see, suddenly and clearly standing before her. This was the valid vision of life for which she had hungered, yet which she had evaded, her entire life.
She understood, now, why life had seemed so empty, so pointless: she herself had rendered it so in refusing to think. Nicci had been a slave to everyone of need. She had given her masters their only real weapon against her; she had surrendered to their twisted lies by putting the crippling chains of guilt around her own neck for them, giving herself freely into slavery to the whims and wishes of others instead of living her life as she should have—for herself. She had never asked why it was right for her to be a slave to another’s desires, but not evil for them to enslave her. She was not contributing to the betterment of mankind, but was merely a servant to countless puling little tyrants. Evil was not one large entity, but a ceaseless torrent of small wrongs left unchallenged, until they festered into monsters.
She had lived her whole life on shifting quicksand, where reason and the intellect were not to be trusted, where only faith was valid, and blind faith was sacred. She, herself, had enforced mindless conformity to that empty evil.
She had helped bring everyone together, so they might have one collective neck around which the worst among men, in the name of good, could put their leash.
Richard had answered their tower of empty lies in one righteously beautiful statement for all to see, and had punctuated it with the simple words on the back of the bronze sundial.
Her life was hers to live by right. She belonged to no one.
Freedom exists first and foremost in the mind of the rational, thinking individual—that was what Richard’s statue had shown her. That he had carved it, proved it. A captive of her and the Order, his ideals had risen above both.
Nicci realized only now that she had always known her father held this same value—she had seen it in his eyes—even though he could never rationalize it. His values were expressed through the integrity of his work; that was why, from a young age, she had wanted to be an armorer like him. It was his vision of life she had always loved and admired, but suppressed, because of Mother and her ilk. It was that same look in Richard’s eyes, that same value for life held dear, that had drawn Nicci to him.
Nicci knew now that she had worn black ever since her mother’s death in an endless, shapeless longing to bury not just her mother’s hold over her, but, more important, her mother’s evil ideals.
She was so sorry Richard wasn’t home. She
As soon as she found him, they would leave. They would go back to the New World. They would find Kahlan. Then, Nicci would set things right. She had to be close to Kahlan, at least within sight, in order to undo the spell. Then Kahlan would be free. Then Richard would be free.
As much as Nicci loved Richard, she understood, now, that he should be with Kahlan, the woman he loved. Her desire for him gave her no right to do as she had done. She had no right to another’s life, as they had no right to hers.
Nicci lay down in her bed and wept at the thought of the outrage she had done to them both. She was overcome with shame. She had been so blind for so long.
She could not believe how she had thrown her entire life away fighting for evil just because it claimed to be good. She truly had been a Sister of the Dark.
She at least could work to correct the harm she had caused.
Kahlan could hardly believe the size of the crowd. By the light of the moon brightening the thin layer of hazy clouds, and by torches here and there throughout the valley, it looked like the open area as far as she could see was packed with people. The numbers had to be in the hundreds of thousands.
Thunderstruck, Kamil threw up his arms. “It’s the middle of the night. I’ve never seen so many people out here. What are they all doing here?”
“How would we know?” Cara sniped. She was in a foul mood, unhappy that they hadn’t found Richard, yet.
The city had been crowded with people, too. With the city guards prowling the streets, uneasy about all the late-night activity, it had been necessary to restrain their eagerness in favor of caution. It had taken them hours to get out to the site by way of back streets, dark roads, and Kamil’s guided tour of alleyways.
The lad pointed. “It’s up there.”
They followed him up a road lined with workshops, most closed up and dark. A few had men inside, still working at benches by the light of lamps or candles.
Kahlan reached under her cloak and curled her fingers around the hilt of her sword when she saw a man running in their direction. He saw them and skidded to a halt.
“Have you seen it?”
“Seen what?” Kahlan asked.
He pointed excitedly. “Down at the palace. In the plaza.” He started running again. He called behind as he went. “I have to go get my wife and sons. They have to see it.”
Kahlan and Cara shared a look in the near darkness.
Kamil ran over to a shop and tugged on a door, but it was shut up tight. “Victor isn’t here.” His voice couldn’t conceal his disappointment. “It’s too late.”
“Do you know what’s down in the plaza?” Kahlan asked him.
He thought a moment. “The plaza? I know the place, but…wait, that’s where Richard told me to go. The plaza. He said to go to the plaza tomorrow.”
“Let’s go down there now and have a look,” Kahlan said.
Kamil waved a hand, pointing. “This is the shortest way, down the hill behind the blacksmith shop.”
So jammed was the place with people, that it took them over an hour just to make it down the hill and across the expanse of grounds around the palace. Even though it was the middle of the night, more people kept arriving all the time.
Once they reached the palace, Kahlan discovered that they couldn’t get to the plaza. There was a huge mob of people stretching back forever along the front wall, waiting to go up to the plaza. When Kahlan, Cara, and Kamil tried to go around and get up there to see what was going on, it nearly started a riot. People had been waiting a long time to reach the plaza, and they didn’t like having others try to push ahead. Kahlan saw several men try to get ahead by going around the waiting crowd. They were set upon by the mob.
Cara pulled her hand out from under her cloak and casually showed Kahlan her Agiel.
Kahlan shook her head. “Long odds with Jagang’s army are one thing, but the three of us against a few hundred thousand does not sound good to me.”
“Really?” Cara asked. “I thought it roughly even.”
Kahlan only smiled. Even Cara knew better than to go against a mob. Kamil frowned in puzzlement at Cara’s humor. When they found the back of the line, they melted in.
It wasn’t long before the line behind them grew so large that they could no longer see the back end winding out into the grounds. The people all around seemed filled with a strange kind of nervous expectancy.
A round woman in front, bundled up in little more than rags, turned a plump grin on them. She held out what looked like a loaf of bread.
“Would you like some?” she asked.
“Thank you, no,” Kahlan said. “But that’s very kind of you to offer.”
“I’ve never made such an offer, before.” The woman giggled. “Seems the right thing to do, now, doesn’t it?”
Kahlan had no idea what the woman was talking about, but said, “Yes, it does.”
Throughout the night, the line inched along. Kahlan’s back ached painfully. She even saw Cara grimace as she stretched.
“I still think we just ought to draw weapons and get up there,” Cara finally complained.
Kahlan leaned in close. “What difference does it make? Where have we to go before morning? When morning comes, we can go up to the blacksmith’s place or to the carving areas over there and hopefully find Richard, but we can do nothing tonight.”
“Maybe he will be at his room, now.”
“You want to run into Nicci again? You know what she’s capable of. The next time we may not be so lucky to escape. We haven’t come all this way to battle her—I just want to see Richard. Even if Richard goes back there—and we don’t know that he will—we do know he’s got to return here in the morning.”
“I suppose,” Cara grouched.
The sky was taking on a faint reddish glow by the time they made it to the foot of the marble steps. They could hear moaning and wailing up ahead. Kahlan couldn’t see the cause, but people up on the plaza were weeping freely. Oddly enough, some people could be heard to laugh joyfully. A few others cursed, as if they had been robbed of their life savings at the point of a knife.
As they slowly made their way up the steps, Kahlan and Cara tried to stay low behind the people surrounding them so as not to draw attention to themselves. The plaza above was lit by dozens of torches, their flickering light giving an indication of the vastness of the crowds. The smell of the burning pitch mixed sourly with the stale sweat of the packed multitude.
Through a momentary gap between people in front of her, Kahlan snatched a quick glance ahead. She blinked at what she saw, but it was gone almost as fast as she saw it, screened by the throng. The people ahead wept—some, it sounded, with joy.
Kahlan began to make out the polite voices of men asking the crowd to keep moving, imploring them to give others a chance. The ragtag collection of people steadily advanced up onto the white marble of the plaza, like beggars at a coronation. The torchlight was finally being replaced by radiant daylight as the sun cleared the horizon. Golden rays washed the face of the palace.
The scenes carved in the stone up on the walls were disturbing. If they were any different from the others she had seen in the Old World, it was only in that they were more gruesome, more horrifying, more desolately hopeless, and more plentiful.
Kahlan’s mind played over the lines of her statue of Spirit. The idea of Richard having to carve such things as she saw up on the walls sickened her.
She felt a sense of gloom overcoming her. This was the Order: pain, suffering, death. This was what was in store for the New World at the hands of these monsters. She couldn’t take her eyes from the scenes on the walls, from the fate that awaited the people of her homeland—the fate so many blindly embraced.
Then, all of a sudden, as the people shuffle
Cara gripped Kahlan’s arm, her fingers digging in painfully as she, too, was taken by the sight. The statue of the man and woman seized Kahlan’s imagination with their nobility of spirit.
She felt tears run down her cheeks, and then she was weeping openly, like the people around her, at the majesty, the dignity, the beauty, of what stood before her. It was everything the carvings on the walls all around were not. It offered freely everything they denied.
LIFE, it said at the base.
Kahlan had to gasp through her tears to draw breath. She clutched at Cara’s arm, and Cara clutched at hers, the two of them holding on to each other for support as the crowd swept them along in a current of shared emotion. The man in the statue was not Richard, but there was much of Richard in it. The woman was not Kahlan, but there was enough of her form in it that Kahlan felt her face flushing at others seeing it.
“Please look and move along so that others may view it too,” the men at the sides kept calling. They weren’t wearing uniforms; they were as tattered-looking as everyone else. They appeared to be ordinary citizens who had just stepped in to help.
The woman who had offered the bread fell to her knees in wailing. Arms respectfully lifted her and helped her to move on. The woman, living in the Old World, had probably never seen a thing of such beauty.
As Kahlan shuffled around the statue, unable to take her eyes from it, she reached out to touch it, as did everyone else. As she was carried past, her fingers met the smooth flesh in stone, knowing it was also where Richard’s fingers had been. She wept all the harder.
As she moved past, Kahlan saw then that the curve of the sundial had words on the back:
“Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it.”
The words were visible on the lips of many who saw them.
The crowd kept coming up the steps, forcing the people around the statue to move on. Men at the rear guided people between the columns, out through the rear of the partially built palace, and out of the way so that others could come up to view the statue.