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“No,” Richard said, “you hate those you envy. You hate that they are happy.”
“But we used The Book of Counted Shadows!” Sister Ulicia cried in desperation. “We followed the original exactly. It still should have worked.”
“Well,” Richard said as he strolled before the blackening sorcerer’s sand, “even if you disregard the safeguard in The Book of Life, I’m afraid that you made a mistake thinking that The Book of Counted Shadows would be of any use.”
“But it’s the real book! The original!”
Richard smiled as he nodded. “It’s the original of yet another fail-safe. Didn’t you read the first thing in that book as well? It also put the important warning first.”
“What warning!”
“The warning to use a Confessor.”
“But we had the original! We had no need of a Confessor!”
“The warning wasn’t that you need a Confessor. The warning was the mention of a Confessor at all.”
Zedd, unable to contain himself, held up a hand. “Richard, what in the world are you talking about?”
Richard smiled at his grandfather. “Who was the first Confessor?”
“Magda Searus.”
Richard nodded. “The woman who had been married to Baraccus. That was during the war. After the great barrier was up and the war was over the wizards up here discovered that the prosecutor in the trial over the Temple of the Winds, Lothain, was a traitor. To discover how he betrayed them, Wizard Merritt used Magda Searus to create a Confessor.”
“Yes, yes,” Zedd said, nodding. “So what?”
“The boxes of Orden were created during the great war. The first Confessor was not brought into being until long after the war. How could The Book of Counted Shadows be the key created to open the boxes if Confessors had not even been dreamed up when Orden was created?”
Zedd blinked in surprise. “The Book of Counted Shadows couldn’t possibly be a key to open the boxes of Orden.”
“That’s right,” Richard said. “They were merely a trick to prevent the misuse of the power of Orden. Using them, even the original can only get you killed. The Book of Counted Shadows is not the key to opening the power of Orden.”
Richard turned to the pandemonium of a building rumble. Vapor, smoke, shadows, and light spun with a roar. The ground shook violently. The sorcerer’s sand, now black as pitch, was sucked into the vortex. With a grating sound the whole of it rotated over the abyss. The sounds of the world of life and the underworld mixed in a terrible howl.
The Sisters spun in the maelstrom, arms and legs sticking out in every direction, their screams lost in the thundering clamor.
Blinding light ignited in the center of the spinning mass. Beams of white-hot light shot upward through the windows overhead and downward into the blackness of the abyss. The air shimmered with heat, light, and a piercing shriek.
With a wailing roar the blackened sand under the Sisters ripped open. Violet light shot up to engulf the terrified women. The rotating light, black sand, and lightning tightened as it built momentum.
Without the benefit of a spirit guide, the Sisters spiraled down into the world of the dead. They went still alive. They went screaming.
A flash lit everything to a blinding white, and then there was silence as everything went black as death.
When the light gradually returned, the Garden of Life was silent. The hole in the ground was gone. The sorcerer’s sand was gone. The Sisters were gone.
Jagang’s personal guard who had been in the Garden of Life were also gone. Being in the room with the power of Orden had been fatal to them as well as the Sisters.
Jagang, wearing the collar that was under the dominion of Nicci, was still there, looking even more angry, if that was possible.
Men of the First File streamed through the double doors into the Garden of Life to protect Richard.
“Close and bolt the doors,” Richard ordered.
The men rushed to do his bidding.
Richard went to the altar and flipped the open box of Orden closed.
“You may have had your little success,” Jagang said with a sneer, “but it means little. It changes nothing.”
When he fell silent with a choking sound, Richard held up a hand. “Let him speak, Nicci.”
She brought the emperor forward.
“The Imperial Order will still get in here and rip this place and all you miserable people apart,” Jagang said. “They do not need me to pursue the just cause we fight for. The Order will cleanse mankind of the scourge of you selfish people. Our cause is not only moral but divine. The Creator is on our side. Our faith proves it.”
“Truth has advocates who seek understanding,” Richard said. “Corrupt ideas have miserable little fanatics who attempt to enforce their beliefs through intimidation and brutality…through faith. Savage force is faith’s obedient servant. Violence on an apocalyptic scale can only be born of faith because reason, by its very nature, disarms senseless cruelty. Only faith thinks to justify it.”
Jagang’s face went red. “We do the Creator’s work! Devout devotion to the Creator is the only true and moral way of this life. Strict adherence to our pious duties will bring us salvation and everlasting life! It is the blood of nonbelievers like your people that lifts us to the side of the Creator Himself.”
Richard made a face. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You are a fool! Our faith alone proves us right! We alone will be rewarded in the afterlife for our reverence to Him. We are his true children, and will live forever in his Light.”
Richard sighed as he shook his head. “It’s always been difficult for me to believe that a grown man could actually believe such nonsense.”
Jagang ground his teeth in fury. “Put me to your tortures! I accept your hatred of me because I have faithfully performed my duties to a greater good for mankind.”
“You will not serve some grand place on the stage of life,” Nicci said. “You will not be paraded in chains. You will not serve as a martyr or be venerated for a glorious death.
“You are irrelevant. You will simply die and be buried, and in that way no longer be able to threaten decent, innocent people. You are irrelevant to the future of mankind.”
&nbs
p; “You must extract your revenge on me for all to see!”
Richard leaned close to the man. “There will be other problems, as there always are in life, but you will not be one of them. You will be yesterday’s garbage, rotting back to dust, your life having meant nothing worthwhile.”
Jagang tried to lunge at Richard, but Nicci’s control of him through the collar kept him back like a chained animal. “You arrogantly think you are better than us, but you are not. You too are but a miserable creature that the Creator placed in this vile world. You are no different than us except that you refuse to repent and worship Him. This is about hatred. That’s all it is. It’s just about you venting your hatred of the Order.”
Richard rested the palm of his left hand on the hilt of his sword. “Justice is not the exercise of hatred, it is the celebration of civilization.”
“You can’t simply—”
With a signal from Richard, Nicci opened a flow of her power into the collar. Jagang’s black eyes opened wide as he felt death fill his empty soul. He toppled face-first to the ground.
Nicci gestured to several men of the First File. “I’m sure that there are soon going to be a great many dead. Throw his corpse in the mass grave with the others of his kind.”
As simply as that, the emperor of the Imperial Order was gone. As Richard had commanded, there was no grand end. There would be no celebration through violence and mutilation, no torture, no forced confessions of wrongdoing. Reasoned people understood the wrongdoing quite well enough. The threat to reasoned people was removed; that was all that mattered. Jagang’s death was no more significant than that.
CHAPTER 62
Without delay, Richard went to the stone altar where the boxes of Orden sat.
He drew his sword.
The distinct metallic ring filled the Garden of Life.
