Soul of the Fire (100 page)

“
Are you sure he’s still alive?” Dalton asked. “Do you ever check?”

“
He’s alive, Minister.”

Dalton was momentarily confused, and then staggered by the title. Whenever someone addressed him by the title it took a split second to realize they meant him. Just the sound of it, Minister of Culture, Dalton Campbell, left him reeling.

The guard held out the torch. “Over here, Minister Campbell.”

Dalton stepped over men so filthy they looked nearly invisible against the greasy-black floor. Fetid water ran through a depression in the center of the blackened brick. Where it came into the room it provided drinking water, such as it was. Where it went out it was a latrine. The walls, the floor, the men, were alive with vermin.

At the far side of the room, across the foul water, a small barred window, about head height and too small for a man to crawl through, opened onto an alley. If family or friends cared if the prisoners lived, they could come to the alley and feed them.

Because the men’s arms and feet were secured in wooden blocks to restrain them, they couldn’t fight one another for food. They could do little more than lie on the floor. They couldn’t walk because of the blocks; at best they could hop a short distance. If they could straighten enough, they could put their mouth up near the window and receive food. If no one fed them, they died.

All the prisoners were naked. The torchlight reflected off greasy-black bodies, and he saw that one of the prisoners was a skinny old woman without teeth. Dalton wasn’t even sure some of the men were alive. They showed no reaction to the men stepping over them.

“
I’m surprised he’s alive,” Dalton said to the guard.

“
He has those who believe in him, still. They come every day and feed him. He speaks to them, through the window, after they feed him. They sit and listen to him ramble on, as if what he had to say were important.”

Dalton had no idea the man still had his followers; it was a bonus. With ready followers, it would take little time to have the movement underway.

A guard dipped a torch to point. “There he is, Minister Campbell. That’s the fellow.”

The guard kicked the man laying on his side. The head turned their way. Not fast, not slow, but deliberate. Rather than the cowed look Dalton expected, one fiery eye glared up.

“
Serin Rajak?”

“
That’s right,” the man growled. “What do you want?”

Dalton squatted down beside the man. He had to make a second attempt at drawing a breath. The stench was overpowering.

“
I’ve just been appointed Minister of Culture, Master Rajak. Only today. As my first act, I’ve come to right the injustice done you.”

Dalton saw then that the man was missing an eye. He had a badly healed sunken scar where it had once been.

“
Injustice. The world is full of injustice. Magic is loose to harm people. Magic has put me here. But I’ve not given in to it. No sir, I’ve not. I’ll never give in to the evil of magic.

“
I gladly gave an eye in the cause. Lost it to a witch. If you expect me to renounce my holy war against the vile purveyors of magic, you can just leave me here. Leave me, do you hear? Leave me! I’ll never give in to them!”

Dalton backed away a little as the man floundered wildly on the floor, yanking at restraints that even someone who was only half crazy could see would never surrender their grip to his trying. He kept trying until fresh blood colored his wrists.

“
I’ll not renounce the struggle against magic! Do you hear? I’ll not give in to those who inflict magic on those of us who worship the Creator!”

Dalton put a restraining hand on the man’s greasy shoulder.

“
You misunderstand, sir. Magic is doing great damage to our land. People are dying from fires and drowning. People, for no reason, are leaping off buildings and bridges—”

“
Witches!”

“
That is what we fear—”

“
Witches cursing people! If you fools would only listen, I tried to warn you! I tried to help! I tried to rid the land of them!”

“
That’s why I’m here, Serin. I believe you. We need your help. I’ve come to release you, and beg you help us.”

The white of the man’s one eye as he stared up was a beacon in the inky night of filth.

“
Praise the Creator,” he whispered. “At last. At last I’ve been called to do His work.”

Richard was stunned by the sight. The wide thoroughfare was packed with people, nearly all carrying candles, a glowing flood of faces washing up Fairfield’s broad main avenue. They flowed around the trees and benches in the center between the two sides of the road, making them look like treed islands.

It was just turning dark. The afterglow at the horizon in the western sky, behind the peaks of distant mountains showing through a thin gap in the gathering clouds, was a deep purple with a pink blush. Overhead, leaden clouds had been gathering all afternoon. The deep rumble of sporadic thunder could be heard in the distance. The humid air smelled damp while at the same time dust churned up by the hooves of the horses rose to choke the air. Occasionally, there fell an errant drop of rain, fat and ripe with the promise of more to follow.

D’Haran soldiers surrounded Richard, Kahlan, and Du Chaillu in a ring of steel. The mounted men all around them reminded Richard of a boat, floating in the sea of faces. The soldiers skillfully refused to give way without looking like they were forcing people aside. The people ignored them; their attention seemed to be on getting where they were going, or maybe it was just too dark for the people to recognize them, thinking they were part of the Anderith army.

The Baka Tau Mana blade masters had vanished. They did that, sometimes. Richard knew they were simply taking up strategic positions in case of trouble. Du Chaillu yawned. It was the end of a long day of traveling that saw them finally returning to Fairfield.

Richard didn’t like the looks of what he saw, and led everyone with him off the main avenue packed with people to a deserted street not far from the main city square. In the gathering gloom he dismounted. He wanted to get a closer look, but didn’t want people to see him there with all the soldiers. Good as his men were, they were no match for the tens of thousands of people in the streets. A colony of tiny ants, after all, could overpower a lone insect many times their size.

Richard left most of the men behind to wait and watch the horses while he took Kahlan and a few men with him to see what was happening. Du Chaillu didn’t ask if she could come along, she simply did. Jiaan, having scouted the area to his satisfaction and found it reasonably safe, joined them. In the shadows of two-story buildings to either side of a north-south street opening onto the square, they watched unnoticed.

A masonry platform with a squat stone railing across the front sat at the head of the square. From it, public announcements were made. Before they went away, Richard had spoken there to interested, earnest people. Richard and Kahlan had come into Fairfield on their way back, intending to speak again at the square before they went on to the estate. It was urgent to start the tedious task of combing through all the books either by or about Joseph Ander, searching for a key to stopping the chimes, but Richard had wanted to reinforce the positive things he had told these people before.

In the last few days the chimes had grown worse. They seemed to be everywhere. Richard and Kahlan had been able to stop some of their own men, overcome with the irresistible call of death, just before they leaped into fire, or slipped into water. They hadn’t been in time for others. None of them had been getting much sleep.

The gathered multitude started chanting.

“
No more war. No more war. No more war.” It was a dull drone, deep and insistent, like the quaking of the distant thunder.

Richard thought it a good sentiment, one he wholeheartedly embraced, but he was disturbed by the anger in people’s eyes, and the tone in their voices as they chanted it. It went on for a time, like thunder booming in from the plains, building, growing.

A man near the platform held up his young girl on his shoulders for the people to see. “She has something to say! Let her speak! Please! Hear my child!”

The crowd called out encouragement. The girl, ten or twelve years old, climbed the steps at the side and, looking determined, marched across the platform to stand at the rail. The crowd quieted to hear her.

“
Please, dear Creator, hear our prayers. Keep Lord Rahl from making war,” she said in a voice powered by simplistic adolescent zeal. She looked to her father. He nodded and she went on. “We don’t want his war. Please, dear Creator, make Lord Rahl give peace a chance.”

Richard felt as if an arrow of ice had pierced his heart. He wanted to explain to the child, explain a thousand things, but he knew she would not understand a one of them. Kahlan’s hand on his back was cold comfort.

Another girl, maybe a year or two younger, climbed the steps to join the first. “Please, dear Creator, make Lord Rahl give peace a chance.”

A line was forming, parents bearing children of all ages to the steps. They all had similar messages. Most stepped forward and simply said, “Give peace a chance,” some not seeming to even comprehend the words they spoke before they returned to proud parents.

It was plain to Richard that the children had been practicing the words all day. The words were not the language of children. That hardly softened the hurt, knowing they believed it.

Some of the children were reluctant, some were nervous, but most seemed proud and happy to be part of the great event. By the passion in their voices, he could tell the older ones believed they were speaking profound words that had a chance to alter history, and avert what was, to them, a pointless loss of life, a disaster for nothing of any good.

A young boy asked, “Dear Creator, why does Lord Rahl want to hurt children? Make him give peace a chance.”

The crowd went wild cheering him. At seeing the reaction, he repeated it, and again it was cheered. Many in the crowd were weeping.

Richard and Kahlan shared a look beyond words. It was obvious to them both that this was no spontaneous outpouring of sentiment; this was a groomed and rehearsed message. They had been getting reports of this sort of thing, but to see it made his blood run cold.

A man Richard recognized as a Director named Prevot finally stepped up onto the platform.

“
Lord Rahl, Mother Confessor,” the man shouted out over the crowd, “if you could hear me now, I would ask, why would you bring your vile magic to our peace-loving people? Why would you try to drag us into your war, a war we don’t want?

“
Listen to the children, for theirs are the words of wisdom!

“
There is no reason to resort to conflict before dialogue. If you cared about the lives of innocent children, you would sit down with the Imperial Order and resolve your differences. The Order is willing, why are you not? Could it be you want this war so you might conquer what isn’t yours? So you may enslave those who reject you?

“
Listen to the wise words of all these children and please, in the name of all that is good, give peace a chance!”

The crowd took up the chant, “Give peace a chance. Give peace a chance. Give peace a chance.” The man let it go on for a time, and then started in again.

“
Our new Sovereign has much work to do for us! We desperately need his guiding hand. Why must Lord Rahl insist on distracting our Sovereign from the work of the people? Why would Lord Rahl put our children at such great peril?

“
For his greed!” the man shouted in answer to his own questions. “For his greed!”

Kahlan put a comforting hand on Richard’s shoulder. He felt little comfort. He was watching all his work being consumed by the heat from the flame of lies.

“
Dear Creator,” Director Prevot called out, lifting his clasped hands to the sky, “we give thanks for our new Sovereign. A man of peerless talent and unrivaled devotion, the most ethical Sovereign ever to reign over us. Please, dear Creator, give him strength against the wicked ways of Lord Rahl.”

Director Prevot spread his arms. “I ask you, good people, to consider this man from afar. A man who took the Mother Confessor of all the Midlands to be his wife.”

The crowd grumbled in growing displeasure—the Mother Confessor, after all, was their Mother Confessor.