Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

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 innuendo and asked him something else instead.

"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 sinner. To consider your own life meaningful is a crime against the Creator as well as your fellow man."

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.