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“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.”
“Except that our lives have an end, so we can say how long a person’s life was. In the underworld there is only that beginning when we die. Since there is no end to being dead, there is no way to measure time in the underworld. That’s why the Grace shows life with a beginning at Creation and an end at death, but once our spirits go beyond into the underworld, it goes on forever.”
She still looked confused. “But that is when the length of time there starts. You start measuring time from that point.”
“Yes but there is only that beginning point. It’s like trying to determine how long a rope is when there is only one end. If you can’t ever reach the other end because the rope goes on forever, then how could you measure how long it is? Life, from beginning to end, is a known quantity. Death has no end.”
Samantha squinted as she tried to imagine such a thing.
“Each day lived,” Richard said, “is one less of our limited number of days gone forever. Time therefore has relevance and meaning to us. Life is precious, so time is precious. Time is how we put value on things such as love. We give our most precious commodity, our time—a part of our lives—over to those we love.”
“I never thought of it in that way. I know how much I treasure the time I spent with my parents, and how much I miss my time with them. What about time in the underworld?”
“We’re dead forever. So a spirit in the underworld has no sense of getting old because spirits don’t get old. They have no sense of their time running out because it doesn’t run out. They remain dead forever, so in the underworld a day or a thousand days or even a million doesn’t measure anything meaningful out of an infinite amount of time. You are still dead and you always will be.
“As a consequence, because death is inalterable and the length of time you will be dead is limitless, there can be no value in being dead, and thus no value to time.”
“But what does that have to do with these half people living a long time?”
Richard arched an eyebrow. “The half people have no soul. That part of them is already dead. Time for the dead is limitless. The half people exist in a third kingdom in violation of the principles of the Grace, in a kingdom with its own set of principles where life and death exist together without clear separation, where they can intermingle in unexpected ways.
“Each of those half people carries that third kingdom, thus death, within them, so time moves differently for them. Emperor Sulachan’s makers apparently used that link to the timeless world of the dead to make these people they turned into weapons long-lived so they could better serve his cause. Time was important to Sulachan because he was alive, so he used the opposites of both life and death to manipulate time for his purpose.”
She stared at him. “That’s all pretty hard to take in.”
Richard nodded, aware that he had seen things she couldn’t yet imagine and were hard for her to grasp.
He was also all too aware that because of the Hedge Maid, death now held a claim on both him and Kahlan, and in that way made the two of them a part of that third kingdom. The difference was that they were not going to be able to live a long time. Their contact with that kingdom, through the touch of the Hedge Maid, was deadly, and the world of the dead would soon call that debt due.
“I know,” he said in a measured voice. “I have to admit, it’s pretty hard for me to take in, too.”
CHAPTER
27
Richard turned his attention back to the symbols carved into the wall and read ahead for a few minutes as Samantha waited patiently. Her eyes tracked his finger from time to time as he traced a particularly difficult emblematic design while working out the translation in his head.
“So what else does it say?” she asked, her patience finally growing thin.
Richard swiped a hand back across his face. “Well, there’s a lot about how Emperor Sulachan wanted to convert as many people as possible into this new race of subhumans, these half people living without a soul in this altered timeline so that they could continue to serve his cause. He also planned on eliminating any opposition to his grand scheme by first eliminating any of the gifted who would oppose him.”
Samantha frowned up at him. “What grand plan is she talking about?”
Richard went to the next line, taking it all in for a moment. He read it twice, making sure it actually said what he thought it said.
“Well?” Samantha asked. “Can you read it or not?”
Richard let out a troubled sigh. “I can read it. I’m having trouble believing it, but I can read it. It’s no wonder that the people of the New World were willing to go to war to stop him.”
“Why, what does it say?”
“It says that Emperor Sulachan wanted to unite the world in what he called the People’s Alliance, with him ruling over it
all.”
Richard had fought the Old World over many of these same kinds of tyrannical ideas of a greater good that some people believed transcended the lives of individuals. What that greater good always came down to was submitting to the rule of a tyrant and sacrificing to their cause, or dying. Enforcing the belief in a greater good required the massacre of anyone who disagreed, since such beliefs could not endure the light of differing beliefs.
Richard had thought that with the latest emperor from the Old World dead, the struggle was at last over. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Evil always seemed to emerge to try to destroy any good that came about, any peace that had settled in, or any prosperity that had emerged. As long as mankind existed, he supposed that there would always be those who thought that their vision of a better world required murdering anyone in the way.
