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CHAPTER 45
Kahlan stared at the pattern in the carpet on the ground at her feet. She didn't want to look defiantly into Jagang's black eyes. A show of bravery at the moment, she knew, would serve little purpose.
When she had been made to walk while the Sisters rode, she had always told herself that it would make her stronger for a time when she would need strength. In much the same way, she wouldn't now use her resolve for a useless show of defiance. Railing against her captor and what he was about to do to her when she knew that she could do nothing to stop it would only be squandering her strength.
She wanted to save her hot rage until the time was right.
And that time would come. She promised herself that such a time would come. Even if it was when she threw herself into the teeth of death itself, she would unleash her smoldering anger at those who did this to her and all the other i
She saw Jagang's boots appear right in front of her. She held her breath, expecting him to seize her. She didn't know what she would do when it actually happened, how she would be able to endure what she knew he was going to do. Her gaze lifted just a little, just enough to see where his knife was on his belt. He rested the heel of his hand on the knife handle.
"We're going out," he said.
Kahlan looked up with a frown. "Out? For what purpose?"
"Tonight is a night of Ja'La dh Jin tournaments. Different units of our soldiers have teams. There are nights devoted to the tournaments. It lifts the hearts of our forces to have their emperor there to witness how they play the game.
"Men are also gathered from all over the conquered parts of the New World and given the chance to join in challenging other teams. It is a great opportunity for them to begin to fit into the new culture we bring to defeated lands, to become part of the fabric of the Order, to participate in our ways.
"The best players can sometimes become heroes. Women fight over such men. The men of my team are all such men — heroes who never lose. Crowds of women wait for these men after the games, eager to open their legs for them. Ja'La players have their pick of any woman."
Kahlan noted that while, as emperor, Jagang probably had the pick of many women who would want to be close to such a man of authority and power, he would rather force himself on her. He would rather take what was not offered, have what he had not won as a result of merit.
"Tonight some of those teams play for ranking. They all hope that one day they might have the chance to play my team in a grand contest for top honors. My team plays the best of the best once or twice a month. They never lose. There is always a burning hope among each new group of challengers that they will be the ones to defeat the best — the emperor's team — and be crowned champions of the games. There would be many rewards for such a team, not the least of which would be the most beautiful of the women who now are eager only to be with the men of my team."
He seemed to enjoy telling her about the habits of such women, as if he were generalizing about all women and in so doing telling her that he thought she was at heart the same. She would rather open a vein. She ignored the i
"If your team is not playing, why do you wish to watch? Surely a man such as you would not bestow your precious presence on the faithful on such a regular basis just to be generous."
He peered at her with a puzzled look, as if it were a strange question. "To see their strategy, of course, to learn the strengths, the weaknesses, of those who will become the opponents of my team."
His sly smile returned. "That is what you do — size up those who might be your opponents — and don't try to tell me that you don't. I see your gaze go to weapons, to the layout of rooms, to the position of men, cover, and escape routes. You are always searching for an opportunity, always watching, always thinking of how to defeat those who stand in your way.
"Ja'La dh Jin is much the same way. It is a game of strategy."
"I've seen it played. I'd say that the strategy is secondary, that it's primarily a game of brutality."
"Well, if you don't enjoy the strategy," he said with a smirk, "then you will no doubt enjoy watching men sweat, strain, and struggle against one another. That's why most women like to watch Ja'La. Men enjoy it for the strategy, the give and take of the contest, the chance to cheer their team to victory, and to imagine being such men themselves; the women like to watch half-naked bodies and sweat-slicked muscles. They like to watch the strongest men prevail, dream of being the desire of conquering heroes, and then scheme of ways to make themselves available to such men."
"Both sound pointless to me. Either brutality, or meaningless rutting."
He shrugged. "In my tongue, Ja'La dh Jin means 'the game of life. Is not life a struggle — a brutal contest? A contest of men, and of sexes? Life, like Ja'La, is a brutal struggle."
Kahlan knew that life could be brutal, but that such brutality did not define life or its purpose, and that the sexes were not rivals, but meant to share together in the work and joys of life.
"To those like you it is," she said. "That's one difference between you and me. I use violence only as a last resort, only when it's necessary to defend my life — my right to exist. You use brutality as a tool of fulfilling your desires, even your ordinary desires, because, except by force, you have nothing worthwhile to offer to exchange for what you want or need — and that includes women. You take, you do not earn.
"I'm better than that. You don't value life or anything in it. I do. That's why you must crush anything good — because it puts the lie to your nothing of a life, shows by contrast how you do nothing but waste your existence.
"That's why you and those like you hate those like me — because I'm better than you and you know it."
"Such a belief is the mark of a si
When she only glared at him, he arched an eyebrow with an admonishing look as he leaned a little closer. He held up a thick finger — adorned with a plundered gold ring — before her face to mark an important point, as if lecturing a selfish, headstrong child who was within an inch of getting a well-deserved thrashing.
"The Fellowship of Order teaches us that to be better than someone is to be worse than everyone."
Kahlan could only stare at such a vulgar ideology. That pious statement of hollow conviction gave her a sudden, true insight into the abyss of his savage nature, and the vindictive character of the Order itself. It was a concept that had abandoned the distant foundation upon which it had been built — that all life equally had the right to exist for its own sake — in order to justify taking life for the Order's own contrived notion of the common good.
Within that simple-sounding framework of an irrational tenet, he had just unwittingly revealed everything.
It explained the depravity of his whole cause and the determinant emotions driving the nature of those monstrous men massed outside, ready to kill anyone who would not submit to their creed. It was a dogma that shrank from civilization, praised savagery as a way of existence, and required constant brutality to crush any noble idea and the man who had it. It was a movement that drew to it thieves who wanted to think themselves righteous, murderers who wanted holy absolution for the blood of i
It assigned any achievement not to the one who had created it, but instead to those who had not earned it and did not deserve it, precisely because they did not earn it and did not deserve it. It valued thievery, not accomplishment.