Blood 43

Chapter 43
Richard is watching a rousing game of Murderball, and pondering how unfairly rough it is on the young'uns, which is an interesting sentiment coming from someone as bloody-handed as Richard. Also, as far as we've been told, Murderball players are all volunteers, and consider the rewards to be worth the risk, so what business is it of his? Anyway, one of the Aryan Boys (they're interchangeable, so I'm no longer bothering with their names) announces the arrival of General Baldwin, the leader of Kelton now that Lummie is dead. Also, they couldn't find anything but diced Mister bits where Gratch and the Misters went down, because anything heavier is scattered o'er the land and buried under ten-to-twenty-foot-deep snowdrifts.
Richard fiddles with his cloak of invisibility while waiting for Baldwin, poofing back into visibility when said general arrives. Baldwin explains that, while Lummie had the authority to surrender Kelton to Richard's Empire of Heroic Tyranny, she's now dead. Richard asserts that this doesn't matter, and Baldwin says it's not that simple – the Keltons need a king or queen, if only as a symbol for them all to rally around, and Lummie was the last of the Lumholtzes. She was also a duchess, not a queen, but never mind that. \~/ 
Baldwin is worried about the possibility of civil war, but since Lummie surrendered to Richard, he is lawfully Kelton's current ruler; if he appointed a king or queen, that would settle everything. Why Richard himself doesn't count as the current king is left unexplained. \~/
Richard declares Kahlan to be the Queen of Kelton. Remembering Kahlan's brutal condemnation of the Keltish people from the last book, I am sure this can only end well. This causes Baldwin to nearly explode with glee.
Um, what? No. No, that's not how it works. Kahlan is the lawful queen of Galea, which you may remember as the country that just suffered a horrific atrocity at Keltish hands. Galea and Kelton have been described as, at best, rivals, and at worst, bitter enemies. Appointing the queen of Galea as the queen of Kelton is, from the Keltish perspective, handing them over to their worst enemies. As a history-savvy friend put it, “That's basically asking for a rebellion.” \~/
Yet somehow, this thrills Baldwin to no end, because he figures that having the Mother Mindrapist as Queen of Kelton means Emperor Richard holds them in the same high esteem as Galea. That, or he's handing Kelton over to Galea to abuse as they wish.
Baldwin leaves, and Richard is on the verge of panic because no one is supposed to know Kahlan is the Mother Mindrapist (no one is supposed to know she's alive, but the magic system has never made sense yet, so why should it start now?). He interrogates the Aryan Boys and the Dominatrices, who all confirm that, yes, his fiance is Kahlan Amnell, the Queen of Galea and Mother Mindrapist. Their memories have been warped by the death spell (THAT! MAKES! NO! SENSE! \~/) so they remember all references to her death as referring to Mother Mindrapists past. No, this is absolutely nothing like how death spells were described in the past.
Richard sends one of the Aryan Boys off to casually mingle with the men and find out if they all suddenly remember who Kahlan is, and the other to get General Rei. Meanwhile, Berdine wanders in and, with Richard's help, finishes translating a passage from the Mysterious Journal of Mystery.
In brief, the writer laments that everyone is violating Wizard's Third Rule, which is: “passion rules reason”. There's also stuff about the dream walkers “scyth[ing] through our men,” and how the writer said farewell to friends who were leaving to give their lives in an attempt to activate the towers in the Valley of the Lost and Found.
I don't have much to say about Wizard's Third Rule yet, but you can be sure I'll remember it, especially in view of how Richard's primary power is freaking rage.
There's a well-written bit about how Richard had been to those very towers and knew intellectually that each one was powered by a suicided wizard, but it never really struck him as real until now. He then thinks about how the first and second Wizard's Rules were explained to him by Zedd and Nathan, respectively, but he'll just have to puzzle this one out himself.
This – somehow – causes Richard to think about when he went to talk to some of the people fleeing Aydindril, which apparently happened off-camera. We're told that the people considered him a monster, who – well, I'll just quote it:
“When pressed, they quoted rumor as if it were fact seen with their own eyes, rumor of how the Lord Rahl 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 had committed against helpless people.
“He asked them how they could be so frank with him if he were a monster. They said that they knew 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.”
Okay, first thing: more vile sex stuff. \~/ Because everything has to relate to sex in some way.
More importantly, though, that . . . is not how psychology works. Like, at all. Assuming you're living in a kingdom ruled by an Evil Overlord and you firmly believe he kidnaps young women and rapes them into insanity . . . why on earth would you taunt him? Why would you provoke and aggravate him? He may – may be reluctant to retaliate in public, but he kidnaps women! He's going to send his secret police to kick in your door and disappear your entire family, you moron! \~/\~/
And spitting at the Evil Overlord? You don't do that unless you're trying to provoke a fight. If you're trying to get your family to safety, you play nice, agree with whatever he says, deny having listened to any of those horrible, untrue rumors, and run like hell as soon as you can. \~/
Richard speculates that this is a violation of Wizard's Third Rule, since the stupid commoners are allowing their emotions to rule their reason. He's not sure, though, so he wastes have a page pondering it. He then remembers “a day back home in the Westland” when Mrs Rencliff, who could not swim, drowned in a river trying to save her son instead of waiting for a rowboat. This is supposed to be an example of someone violating Wizard's Third Rule, and is portrayed as a Bad Thing. I find myself entirely sympathizing with Mrs Rencliff and her selfless efforts to save her son rather than wait.
This somehow grants Richard a total and transcendent understanding of Wizard's Third Rule, because of course it does.
One of the Aryan Boys comes back with General Rei. Richard briefly explains that Kahlan is in danger because a spell concealing her identity has been removed, and he wants Rei to take some troops to find and protect her. There are about three hundred thousand in an around Aydindril, and Richard wants Rei to take 100,000 of those soldiers to find Kahlan.
. . . no. Just, no. You cannot have that many trained, able-bodied soldiers in the field, in a single city, in a medieval setting. You can't. It's impossible. Even if you had that many soldiers, they would starve in such a small area.
The Roman Empire had about 450,000 soldiers as of 211 A.D, and that's spread out over an area consisting of most of Europe, minus Russia. Terry Goodkind is claiming that Richard has an army of two-thirds that size in one single city.
\~/\~/
General Rei asserts that all D'Haran soldiers are “ready to leave on a moment's notice.”
\~/\~/
Yeah, no. Even assuming you somehow had a hundred thousand soldiers in one place, getting them moved would be a matter of weeks. Not “a moment's notice.”
Rei says he'll make it happen. Richard angsts for a while about wanting to come with to help protect Kahlan, but decides this would be a violation of Wizard's Third Rule, so he'll stay in Aydindril.
Drinks: 12
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