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Richard thought about the Third Rule, trying to reason it out for himself. Before, for the first and second, he had had Zedd, and then Nathan to explain it for him, to make him see how the rules worked in life. He would have to work this one out himself.
He recalled going down to the roads leading out of Aydindril, to talk to some of the people fleeing the city. He had wanted to know why they would leave, and had been told by fearful people that they knew the truth: that he was a monster who would slaughter them for his twisted pleasure.
When pressed, they quoted rumor as if it were fact seen with their own eyes, rumor of how the Lord Rahl had children as slaves in the palace, how he took countless young women to his bed, leaving them senseless from the experience to wander the streets naked. They claimed to know young women and girls whom he had gotten pregnant, and furthermore knew people who had actually seen the miscarriages of some of these poor victims of his rape, and they had been hideous, misshapen freaks, the spawn of his evil seed. They spat at him for the crimes he committed against helpless people.
He asked them how they could be so frank with him if he were such a monster. They said that they knew he wouldn’t do them harm in the open, that they had heard how he pretended to be compassionate in public so as to fool people, so they knew he would do nothing to them in front of the crowds, and they would soon have their womenfolk away from his evil clutches.
The more Richard tried to put to rest the baffling beliefs, the more tenaciously the people clung to them. They said they had heard these things from too many others for it to be anything but true. Such common knowledge could not be false, they said, as it would be impossible to fool so many people. They were passionate in their belief and their fear, and would hear no arguments of logic. They simply wanted to be left alone to run to the protection they had heard was offered by the Imperial Order.
Their passion was going to bring them to true ruin. He wondered if this could be how violation of the Third Rule hurt people. He didn’t know if it was a solid enough example. It seemed tangled with the First Rule: People would believe any lie, either because they wanted it to be true, or because they feared it was. It seemed it could be several rules mixed together, violated in tandem, and he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
And then Richard recalled the day back home in Westland when Mrs. Rencliff, who could not swim, had wrenched her arms from the men trying to hold her back, refusing to wait for the rowboat, and had leapt into a flood swollen river after her boy who had fallen in. The men rushed up a few minutes later with the rowboat and saved the boy’s life. Chad Rencliff grew up without a mother; they never found her body.
Richard’s skin prickled as if ice had touched it. He understood. Wizard’s Third Rule: Passion rules reason.
It was a distressing hour of detailing the way people’s passion instead of reason brought them to harm, and worse, wondering how magic could add ruin to the equation, as he knew it would, before Ulic finally returned with the general.
General Reibisch clapped a fist to his heart as he entered the room. “Lord Rahl, Ulic said you were in a hurry to see me.”
Richard gripped the bearded man’s dark uniform. “How long will it take you to get men ready to leave on a search?”
“Lord Rahl, they’re D’Harans. D’Haran soldiers are always ready to leave on a moment’s notice.”
“Good. You know my bride-to-be, Queen Kahlan Amnell?”
General Reibisch nodded. “Yes. The Mother Confessor.”
Richard winced. “Yes, the Mother Confessor. She’s on her way here from the southwest. She’s past due, and there may be trouble. She had a spell over her to protect her identity as the Mother Confessor, so that her enemies couldn’t hunt her. Somehow, the spell has been removed. It might be nothing, but it could be that it means trouble. For sure, her enemies will now know of her.”
The man scratched his rust-colored beard. His grayish green eyes came up at last. “I see. What would you like me to do?”
“We have close to two hundred thousand men in Aydindril, with another hundred thousand scattered all around the perimeter of the city. I don’t know exactly where she is, except that she’s supposed to be to the southwest and on her way here. We have to protect her.
“I want you to get a force together, half the troops in the city, a hundred thousand at least, to go out after her.”
The general stroked his scar as he heaved a sigh. “That’s a lot of men, Lord Rahl. Do you think we need to take that many from the city?”
Richard paced between the desk and the general. “I don’t know exactly where she is. If we take too few we could miss her by fifty miles and wander off without ever making contact. With that many men we can fan out as we go, cast a wide net, covering all the roads and trails so we don’t miss her.”
“You will be going with us, then?”
Richard desperately wanted to go find Kahlan and Zedd. He glanced to Berdine sitting behind the desk as she worked, and thought about the words of warning from a three-thousand-old wizard. Wizard’s Third Rule: Passion rules reason.
Berdine needed his help to translate the journal. He was already learning important things about the last war, and the towers, and the dream walkers. A dream walker again walked the world.
If he did go, and Kahlan slipped past him where he searched, it might take longer for him to join with her than if he simply waited in Aydindril. And then there was the Keep. Something had happened at the Keep, and it was his duty to guard the magic there.
Richard’s passion told him to go—he desperately wanted to go search for Kahlan—but in his mind’s eye, he saw Mrs. Rencliff diving into the dark, rushing water, refusing to wait for the boat. These men were his boat.
The troops could find Kahlan and protect her. He could do nothing to add to that protection. Reason told him to wait here, as much anxiety as that would cause him. Like it or not, he was a leader now. A leader had to act with reason, or everyone would pay the price of his passion.
“No, General. I’ll remain in Aydindril. Get the troops together. Take the best trackers.” He looked to the man’s eyes. “I know I don’t have to tell you how important this is to me.”
“No, Lord Rahl,” the general said in a compassionate tone. “Don’t worry, we’ll find her. I’ll go with the men to make certain that everything is done with the same care as you would do it if you were there.” He put his fist to his heart. “Every one of our lives before harm touches your queen.”
Richard laid a hand to the man’s shoulder. “Thank you, General Reibisch. I know I could do no more than you will. May the good spirits be with you.”
44
“Please, Wizard Zorander.”
The skinny wizard didn’t glance up from spooning beans and bacon into his mouth. She didn’t know how the man could eat as much as he did.
“Are you listening?”
It wasn’t like her to yell, but she was near the end of her patience. This was proving to be even more trouble than she had envisioned. She knew she had to do this, to cultivate his hostility, but this was too much.
With a pleased sigh, Wizard Zorander tossed his tin bowl down with their packs. “Good night, Nathan.”
Nathan lifted an eyebrow as Wizard Zorander crawled into his bedroll. “Good night, Zedd.”
Nathan, too, was becoming dangerously difficult to deal with since she had captured the old wizard. He had never had such a talented cohort before. Ann sprang to her feet and stood with her fists on her hips as she glared down at the white hair sticking from the blanket.
“Wizard Zorander, I’m begging you.”
It infuriated her to implore his aid in such a humble fashion, but she had learned the hard way what the results could be when she used the power of his collar to bring him to task through unpleasant means. How the man could manage to get those tricks through the block she had locked on his collar mystified her, but get them through he did, to the great amusement of Nathan. She was not amu
sed.
Ann was near tears. “Please, Wizard Zorander.”
His head turned up, the firelight casting the lines of his bony face in harsh shadows. His hazel eyes fixed on her.
“If you open that book again, you will die.”
With ghostlike stealth, he slipped spells around her shields when she least expected it. She was at a loss to understand how he had put a light spell on the journey book. She had opened it that night and had seen the message from Verna that she had been captured and put in a collar, and then everything had gone terribly wrong.
Opening the book had triggered the light spell. She had seen it swell and flare. A bright, burning cinder had shot up into the air, and the old wizard had calmly told her that if she didn’t close the book by the time the glowing spark of light hit the ground, she would be incinerated.
With one eye on the hissing spark as it descended, she had managed only to scrawl a hurried message to Verna that she must escape and get the Sisters away. She had closed the book just in time. She knew he was not jesting about the deadly nature of the spell around the book.
