"Yes, but back then," Richard said, "they trained those with only Additive to be able to use the Subtractive, too, like full wizards of the time. As time went on, though, even that was being lost to them, and they were only able to do what Zedd did-train men to be wizards but they could only wield Additive Magic.
"But that isn't really what the book is about," Richard said as he gestured dismissively. "That was just a side point to record what they had attempted. They started out with confidence. They thought that these pillars of Creation could be cured of being pristinely ungifted, much like wizards with only Additive could be trained to use both sides of the magic, and those without the gift for wizardry could be made wizards able to use at least the Additive side of it."
The way he used his hands when he talked reminded her of the way Zedd did when he became worked up. "They tried to modify the very nature of how these people had been born. They tried to take people without any spark of the gift, and alter them in a desperate attempt to give them the ability to interact with magic. They weren't just adding or enhancing, they were trying to create something out of nothing."
Kahlan didn't like the sound of that. They knew that in those ancient times the wizards had great power, and they altered people with the gift, manipulated their gift, to suit a specific purpose.
They created weapons out of people.
In the great war, Jagang's ancestors were one such weapon: dream walkers. Dream walkers were created to be able to take over the minds of people in the New World and control them. Out of desperation, the bond of the Lord Rahl was created to counter that weapon, to protect a people from the dream walkers.
Any number of human weapons were conjured from the gifted. Such changes were often profound, and they were irrevocable. At times, the creations were monsters of boundless cruelty. From this heritage, Ja-gang had been born.
During that great war, one of the wizards who had been put on trial for treason refused to reveal what damage he had done. When even torture failed to gain the man's confession, the wizards conducting the trial turned to the talents of a wizard named Merritt and ordered the creation of a Confessor.
Magda Searus, the first Confessor, extracted the man's confession. The tribunal was so pleased with the results of Wizard Merritt's conjuring that they commanded that an order of Confessors be created.
Kahlan felt no different than other people felt, she was no less human, no less a woman, loved life no less, but her Confessor's power was the result of that conjuring. She, too, was a descendant of women altered to be weapons-in this case weapons designed to find the truth.
"What's the matter?" Richard asked.
She glanced over and saw the look of concern on his face. Kahlan forced a smile and shook her head that it was nothing.
"So what is it that you discovered by jumping ahead in the book?"
Richard took a deep breath as he folded his hands over the pommel of the saddle. "Essentially, they were attempting to use color in order to help people born without eyes… to see."
From Kahlan's understanding of magic and of history, this was fundamentally different from even the most malevolent experiments to alter people into weapons. Even in the most vile of these instances, they were attempting to take away some attribute of their humanity and at the same time add to or enhance an elemental ability. In none of it were they trying to create that which was not there at all.
"In other words," Kahlan summed up, "they failed."
Richard nodded. "So, here they were, the great war was long over and the Old World-those who had wanted to end magic, much like the Imperial Order-was safely sealed away beyond the barrier that had been created. Now they find out that the birth rate of those carrying the gift of wizardry is plummeting, and that the magic engendered by the House of Rahl, the bond with his people designed to stop the dream walkers from taking them, has an unexpected consequence-it also gives birth to the pristinely ungifted, who are an irreversible break in the lineage of magic."
"They have two problems, then," Kahlan said. "They have fewer wizards being born to deal with problems of magic, and they have people being born with no link at all to the magic."
"That's right. And the second problem was growing faster than the first. In the beginning, they thought they would find a solution, a cure.
They didn't. Worse, as I explained before, those born of the pristinely ungifted, like Jennsen, always bear children the same as they. In a few generations, the number of the people without the link to the gift was growing faster than anyone ever expected."
Kahlan let out a deep breath. "Desperate indeed."
"It was becoming chaos."
She hooked a loose strand of hair back. "What did they decide?"
Richard regarded her with one of those looks that told her he was pretty disturbed by what he'd found.
