"They chose magic over people. They deemed that this attribute- magic, or those who possessed it-was more important than human life." His voice rose. "Here they took the very thing they fought the war over, the right of those who were born the way they were-in that case people born with magic-to their own lives, to exist, and they turned it all around to be that this attribute was more important than the life which held it!"
He let out a breath and lowered his voice. "There were too many to execute, so they did the next best thing-they banished them."
Kahlan's eyebrows went up. "Banished them? To where?"
Richard leaned toward her with fire in his eyes. "The Old World."
"What!"
Richard shrugged, as if speaking on behalf of the wizards back then, mocking their reasoning. "What else could they do? They could hardly execute them; they were friends and family. Many of those normal people with the spark of the gift-but who were not gifted as wizards or sorceresses and so didn't think of themselves as gifted-had sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors who had married these pristinely ungifted, these pillars of Creation. They were part of society-a society which was less and less populated by the truly gifted.
"In a society where they were increasingly outnumbered and mistrusted, the ruling gifted couldn't bring themselves to put all these tainted people to death."
"You mean they even considered it?"
Richard's eyes told her that they had and what he thought of the notion. "But in the end, they couldn't. At the same time, after trying everything, they now realized that they couldn't ever restore the link to magic once it was broken by these people, and such people were marrying and having children, and the children were marrying and having children-who in every case passed along this taint. And, those so tainted were increasing in numbers faster than anyone had imagined.
"As far as the gifted were concerned, their very world was threatened, in much the same way it had been threatened by the war. That was, after all, what those in the Old World had been trying to do- destroy magic-and here it was, the very thing they feared, happening.
"They couldn't repair the damage, they couldn't stop it from spreading, and they couldn't put to death all those among them. At the same time, with the taint multiplying, they knew that they were running out of time. So, they settled on what to them was the only way out- banishment."
"And they could cross the barrier?" she asked.
"Those with the gift, for all practical purposes, were prevented from crossing the barrier, but for those who were pillars of Creation, magic did not exist; they were unaffected by it, so, to them, the barrier was not an obstacle."
"How could those in charge be sure they had all the pillars of Creation? If any escaped, the banishment would fail to solve their problem."
"Those with the gift-wizards and sorceresses-can somehow recognize those pristinely ungifted for what they are: holes in the world, as Jennsen said those like her were called. The gifted can see them, but not sense them with their gift. Apparently, it wasn't a problem to know who the pillars of Creation were."
"Can you tell any difference?" Kahlan asked. "Can you sense Jennsen as being different? Being a hole in the world?"
"No. But I've not been taught to use my ability. How about you?"
Kahlan shook her head. "I'm not a sorceress, so I guess that I don't have the ability to detect those like her." She shifted her weight in her saddle. "So, what happened with those people back then?"
"The people of the New World collected all those ungifted offspring of the House of Rahl and their every single last descendant, and sent the whole lot of them across the great barrier, to the Old World, where the people had professed that they wanted mankind to be free of magic."
Richard smiled with the irony, even of such a grim event as this. "The wizards of the New World, in essence, gave their enemy in the Old World exactly what they professed to want, what they had been fighting for:
mankind without magic."
His smile withered. "Can you imagine deciding that we had to banish Jennsen and send her into some fearful unknown, simply because of the fact that she can't see magic?"
Kahlan shook her head as she tried to envision such a time. "What a horror, to be uprooted and sent away, especially to the enemy of your own people."
Richard rode in silence for a time. Finally, he went on with the story.
"It was a terrifying event for those banished, but it was also traumatic almost beyond endurance to those who were left. Can you even imagine what it must have been like. All those friends and relatives suddenly ripped out of your life, your family? The disruption to trade and livelihood?" Richard's words came with bitter finality. "All because they decided some attribute was more important than human life."
