Terry Goodkind - Naked Empire

“How is such a thing possible?” Jennsen asked.

“I don’t know,” Richard said. “When our ancestors created the bond of the Lord Rahl to the D’Haran people, it carried the unique ability to consistently bear a gifted heir. Magic needs balance. Maybe they had to make it work like this, have this counter of those born like you, in order for the magic they created to work; maybe they didn’t realize what would happen and inadvertently created the balance.”

Jennsen cleared her throat. “What would happen if . . . you know, if I were to have children?”

Richard surveyed Jennsen’s eyes for what seemed a painfully long time.

“You would bear offspring like you.”

Jennsen sat forward, her hands reflecting her emotional entreaty. “Even if I marry someone with that spark of the gift? Someone able to perceive color, as you called it? Even then my child would be like me?”

“Even then and every time,” Richard said with quiet certitude. “You are a broken link in the chain of the gift. According to the book, once the line of all those born with the spark of the gift, including those with the gift as it is in me, going back thousands of years, going back forever, is broken, it is broken for all time. It cannot be restored. Once forfeited in such a marriage, no descendant of that line can ever restore the link to the gift. When these children marry, they too would be as you, breaking the chain in the line of those they marry. Their children would be the same, and so on.

“That’s why the Lord Rahl always hunted down ungifted offspring and eliminated them. You would be the genesis of something the world has never had before: those untouched by the gift. Every offspring of every descendant would end the line of the spark of the gift in everyone they married. The world, mankind, would be changed forever.

“This is the reason the book calls those like you ‘pillars of Creation.’ ”

The silence seemed brittle.

“And that’s what this place is called, too,” Tom said as he pointed a thumb back over his shoulder, seeming to feel the need to say something into the quiet, “the Pillars of Creation.” He looked at the faces surrounding the weak light coming from the sputtering lantern. “Seems a strange coincidence that both those like Jennsen and this place would be called the same thing.”

Richard stared off into the darkness toward that terrible place where Kahlan would have died had he made a mistake with the magic involved. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. They are connected, somehow.”

The book— The Pillars of Creation —describing those born like Jennsen was written in the ancient language of High D’Haran. Few people still living understood High D’Haran. Richard had begun to learn it in order to unravel important information in other books they’d found that were from the time of the great war.

That war, extinguished three thousand years before, had somehow ignited once again, and was burning uncontrolled through the world. Kahlan feared to think of the central—if inadvertent—part she and Richard had played in making it possible.

Jennsen leaned in, as if looking for some thread of hope. “How do you think the two might be connected?”

Richard let out a tired sigh. “I don’t know, yet.”

With a finger, Jennsen rolled a pebble around in a small circle, leaving a tiny rut in the dust. “All of those things about me being a pillar of Creation, being the break in the link of the gift, makes me feel somehow . . . dirty.”

“Dirty?” Tom asked, looking hurt to hear her even suggest such a thing. “Jennsen, why would you feel that way?”

“Those like me are also called ‘holes in the world.’ I guess I can see why, now.”

Richard leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I know what it’s like to feel regret for how you were born, for what you have, or don’t have. I hated being born the way I was—with the gift. But I came to realize how senseless such feelings are, how completely wrong it was to think that way.”

“But it’s different with me,” she said as she pushed at the sand with a finger, erasing the little ruts she’d made with the pebble. “There are others like you—wizards or sorceresses with the gift. Everyone else can at least see colors, as you put it. I’m the only one like this.”

Richard gazed at his half sister, a beautiful, bright, ungifted half sister that any previous Lord Rahl would have murdered on the spot, and was overcome with a radiant smile. “Jennsen, I think of you as born pure. You’re like a new snowflake, different than any other, and startlingly beautiful.”

Looking up at him, Jennsen was overcome with a smile of her own. “I never thought of it that way.” Her smile withered as she thought about his words. “But still, I’d be destroying—”

“You would be creating, not destroying,” Richard said. “Magic exists. It cannot possess the ‘right’ to exist. To think so would be to ignore the true nature—the reality—of things. People, if they don’t take the lives of others, have the right to live their life. You can’t say that because you were born with red hair you supplanted the ‘right’ of brown hair to be born on your head.”

Jennsen giggled at such a concept. It was good to see the smile taking firmer hold. By the look on Tom’s face, he agreed.

“So,” Jennsen finally asked, “what about this thing we’re going to see?”

“If the thing Cara touched has been altered by someone with the gift, then since you can’t see the magic, you might see something we can’t see: what lies beneath that magic.”

Jennsen rubbed the edge of her boot heel. “And you think that will tell you something important?”

“I don’t know. It may be useful, or it may not, but I want to know what you see—with your special vision—without any suggestion from us.”

“If you’re so worried about it, why did you leave it? Aren’t you afraid someone might come across it and take it?”

“I worry about a lot of things,” Richard said.

“Even if it really is something altered by magic and she sees it for what it truly is,” Cara said, “that doesn’t mean that it still isn’t what it seems to us, or that it isn’t just as dangerous.”

Richard nodded. “At least we’ll know that much more about it. Anything we learn might help us in some way.”

Cara scowled. “I just want her to turn it back over.”

Richard gave her a look designed to keep her from saying anything else about it. Cara huffed, leaned in, and took one of Richard’s dried apricots.

She scowled at him as she popped the apricot into her mouth.

As soon as supper was finished, Jennsen suggested that they pack all the food safely back in the wagon so that Betty wouldn’t help herself to it in the night. Betty was always hungry. At least, with her two kids, she now had a taste of what it was like to be badgered for food.

Kahlan thought that Friedrich should be given consideration, because of his age, so she asked him if he’d like to take first watch. First watch was easier than being awakened in the middle of the night to stand watch between stretches of sleep. He smiled his appreciation as he nodded his agreement.

After opening his and Kahlan’s bedroll, Richard doused the lantern. The night was sweltering but crystal clear so that, after Kahlan’s eyes adjusted, the sweep of stars was enough to see by, if not very well. One of the white twins thought the newly unfurled bedrolls would be a perfect place to romp. Kahlan scooped up the leggy bundle and returned it to its tail-wagging mother.

As she lay down beside Richard, Kahlan saw the dark shape of Jennsen curl up by Betty and collect the twins in the tender bed of her arms, where they quickly settled down.