Wizard 26

**Chapter 26**

Richard and Kahlan run through the village, screaming Siddin's name. Instead of, you know, telling his father (who is right there) or the Bird Man of Alcatraz, or, hell anyone. No, it's better to run around screaming rather than tell the villagers that one of their children is playing with a potentially dangerous magical doodad. \~/ Remember kids: if there's an emergency, run around screaming!

Actually, they do scream at Savidlin, the father, to find his kid and not let him open the pouch. Still panicky screaming, though, and not much useful information.

They find the boy just as he takes the stone out of the pouch. Instantly, shadows start materializing out of the air. Richard starts hacking them up with his magic sword, and the Wet Dirt People try shooting them with arrows, which does nothing. One of the elders, Toffalar, thinks Richard is destroying their ancestors' spirits, and tries to stop him. Which, if you think about it, is a fairly reasonable thing to believe. The crafty outsiders tried to trick the Noble Savage People into accepting them, and when they refused, mysterious spirits appears and the outsiders started destroying them. Nevertheless, Toffee is treated as a madman for having this idea.

Richard reaches Siddin and slaughters shadows. Kahlan tries to get to Richard and Siddin. Toffee tries to reach Kahlan. The shadows swirl around menacingly. The other NPCs – er, I mean, Mud People – do nothing because their weapons can't hurt the shadows (this is why it sucks to be a commoner in D&D).

Toffee reaches Kahlan and attacks her with a knife. Kahlan is about to unleash her mind vampire power, but hesitates because she doesn't want Richard to see. This gives Toffee a chance to cut her arm. She grabs him and, in extreme slow-mo, uses her Magical Mystery Power on him. This causes Toffee to say *“Mistress”* in a *“reverent whisper,”* so apparently it's some sort of charm or dominate ability. Instead of using her new mindslave intelligently – like, say, ordering him to put the damn stone back in the pouch – she throws him into a cluster of shadows, killing him.

Kahlan grabs the stone and puts it back in the pouch. The shadows disappear. Yay.

Everyone is happy that the shadows are gone and Siddin has been saved. Kahlan sees Toffee's corpse and starts crying – not because she killed him, “but because she had hesitated.” She is not sorry she murdered a man who thought he was defending his people, only that she didn't kill him faster. Even when she was killing him, the text makes it very clear that Kahlan felt “no pity. No remorse.” She is a cold-blooded killer and she feels not the slightest bit of regret about that. \~/

The Bird Man of Alcatraz orders some Mud People to bury Toffee's corpse , “all of it.” They're not keeping his skull to watch over the land of the people **he died trying to defend**. “It was just about the worst thing you could do to an elder, a dishonor of the highest order. It meant his life had mattered for nothing.”

Toffee called Richard on his White Man Trickery, which was completely justified and absolutely correct. He then jumped to the understandable conclusion that the shadows were ancestral spirits, and the White Devil was destroying them. He gave his life defending his ancestral spirits. For this selfless sacrifice, he is dishonored and denigrated. His life retroactively counts for nothing, no matter what else he might have accomplished. \~/

I feel mildly ill.

This, friends, is one of the defining marks of the Sue. Toffee disagreed with Richard; therefore, he is evil and must die. Richard can't be wrong, and Toffee can't possibly be right unless he agrees with Richard. Richard defines right and wrong by what he believes. Richard defines morality.

Ick.

The Bird Man of Alcatraz then names Savidlin as the newest elder, replacing Toffee. Savidlin immediately demands that Richard and Kahlan be named Mud People, because of their heroic defense of Siddin (against a danger they brought into the village, mind you). The Bird Man says that the decision must be unanimous, so Savidlin grabs a bow and threatens to murder all the other elders unless they agree with him. Umm...is this really how the Mud People legal system works? \~/

The elders declare that they were wrong, Richard is right, and if he wants he can totally kill them for their heinous crime of not immediately agreeing with everything he said. They bow and wait for him to kill them, if he so desires. Richard, of course, tells them that he's not going to kill anyone, and to get up and...

Oh wait; wrong book. What actually happens is that Richard glares at the elders and looms over them like a god of death for a while. Then he draws his sword. Then we learn that *“Strength, to the Mud People, meant the strength to kill your adversary. These men were already dead in the eyes of the village, and only Richard could give them back their lives.”*

Yes it turns out that is how the Mud People legal system works. The Mud People are bloody savages who measure strength – and, by implication, a person's worth – by their ability to kill. Nothing else seems to matter. Maybe that's not what Mr. Goodkind meant, but that's what he said, so that's what we have to go with.

But it turns out not to matter. *“Even so, their law was irrelevant; the Seeker was a law unto himself, answering ultimately to no one but himself.”* The Seeker doesn't need to respect or even acknowledge any other laws but his own desires. He somehow trumps them all. Who designed this legal system? \~/

Richard invokes the magic of the Sword of Truth, which, you'll recall, is pure rage. Kahlan realizes that he's not deciding whether or not to kill the elders, but *”if he dared let them live.”* If there's a chance they might not do exactly what he wants, Richard would kill them. We know this is the right thing to do because the book tells us so.

Richard cuts his left arm with the sword, smears the blood around on the blade, touches it to his forehead, and says *“Blade, be true this day.”* This seems like some sort of warrior's ritual, except that Richard isn't a warrior. He's a woods guide. There's no indication that he's ever even held a sword before Zedd gave him the Sword of Truth. He's had zero training. He should be a bumbling amateur with the sword, but of course he isn't. \~/

Richard rather sadistically forces Elder #1 to look him in the eye; the fact that Elder #1 holds Richard's gaze as Richard is about to murder him raises my opinion of him. Richard screams and swings the sword down at Elder #1's face, and it stops in mid-air an inch away. So Richard informs the elders that he returns their lives and their honor (apparently only Elder #1 has to have a sword swung at his face...sure hope Elder #3 isn't plotting against Richard).

Kahlan asks if Richard expected the sword to stop. He says no. Kahlan wonders if maybe he should have killed them anyway...which, in addition to being awfully bloody-minded of her, is pretty unfair: Richard just tried his level best to kill Elder #1.

And here we have yet another blatant contradiction of The Rules. Say it with me: only perception matters. Richard intended to kill the elders. He expected to kill them. He tried to kill them. But the sword wouldn't hurt them. There are only two explanations for this:

1. Richard believed the elders weren't any danger to him, but decided to try to kill them anyway.
2. The magic of the sword doesn't work the way Zedd said it does.

Really, these are the only two possibilities. Richard said he didn't expect the sword to stop; therefore, he was trying to kill Elder #1. There's no other reason to swing a sword at someone's head. If only perception matters, this means the sword stopped because Richard didn't perceive the elder as an enemy, which means he was trying to murder an innocent bystander at best, and an ally at worst.

On the other hand, if Richard honestly believed the elders were a threat, and was honestly trying to kill them to remove that threat...that means the magic doesn't work based on perception. The magic itself is a sentient force that decides who lives and who dies. The wielder's perceptions have nothing to do with it. Which is exactly the opposite of what Zedd said.

So, either Richard is a bloody-minded killer, or Zedd is a bald-faced liar. \~/\~/

The Bird Man of Alcatraz asks Kahlan whether she and Richard are ready to become Mud People and respect their laws and ways. Kahlan says that she and Richard have sworn their lives to save the Damp Soil People, and that she expects to die in the quest, which really doesn't answer anything. The Bird Man of Alcatraz say that he can excuse her from eating meat on the grounds that she is a woman, and “Being a Confessor excludes you from the other.” Richard, however, has no such excuses. Kahlan promises on Richard's behalf.

Kahlan gets her arm cut cleaned and stitched. We learn that she cannot afford to become too relaxed or distracted or her Magical Mystery Charm Power might go off without her meaning it to. Apparently sleep doesn't count for this, but the pain-relieving leaves which the healer gives her to chew, do.

We finally get a description of Richard's clothing. On page 267. He's wearing buckskin pants and a tunic.

Drinks: 7

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